The first month of this journey has been everything I was hoping for and more! The Tongass NF is so vast and filled with dense wilderness, it’s much more accessible by float plane or boat than by car. So we’ve been traveling mostly by boat, which can present challenges with rough seas or stormy days. However, the weather has been surprisingly incredibly nice. The tales of torrential rain 7 days a week were greatly over exaggerated (please don’t let this jinx me).

As we wait for our targeted species to flower, develop fruits, and then go to seed, we have filled our time with trainings, scouting, rare species surveys, and micro timber sale surveys. We’ve also done a few personal use timber surveys, a program that I believe is unique to Alaska. Each Alaskan resident is given the opportunity to take 10,000 board feet of timber for their personal use (usually to build a house or stock up on firewood). So i’ve gone out to a few different islands with the timber crew to survey the trees they’ve chosen to make sure it’s 150 ft away from any streams or eagles nest, the forest floor is clear of any rare species, and outside of any cultural resource sites. It’s been an interesting experience, my preconceived bias was that these individuals would want the biggest and easiest trees to extract. However, the individuals were very environmentally conscious, and turned down trees that they felt would disturb the ecology of the forest. Its refreshing to see how connected the residents here are with the forest, something that is not as common in other parts of America.

Anyways, I’m super excited for the rest of this adventure. I’ve learned a ton and can’t wait to absorb even more!