Letters to the Editor

Sealaska has shamed themselves

To the Editor:

Last week in Petersburg, Alaska’s newest environmental group ‘The Greater Southeast Alaska Conservation Community,’ (gsacc.net) gave a slide show on the latest industrial logging now taking place on state land, Sealaska land and other land grant interests. The slideshow consisted of images from ‘Google Earth’ satellite overviews of Sealaska lands on the Cleveland Peninsula, and also on P.O.W.’s Election Creek and other examples. Needless to say, the push to privatize land from the Tongass National Forest in order to rapidly deforest and export round logs as fast as possible, was upsetting, shocking, and holds dire consequences into the future with slides and erosion. The overview photos of miles long clear-cuts covering entire mountains, looked like a war zone of stumps on a vast landscape. It gave over the feeling that Sealaska was murdering the very earth itself. The thousands of acres of continuous clear-cuts leaving no living thing standing in the path of devastation boggled the mind. But it became clear, that this is not logging, no, this is some kind of diabolical crime against life and nature. This kind of scorched earth logging represents the most debased greed, selfish thoughtlessness and the lowest capabilities of human nature.

Oh sure, over time some sort of spindly mono culture devoid of biological fungus, insects and animals that make up a living forest, will replace the crime now carved into the dirt, but it will be a poor substitute for the timeless lush forests that were destroyed. There is no future in this mega scale clear-cuts of death in the Tongass. We have an economy that depends on a healthy living forest for fishing, tourism, subsistence and the kind of smaller scale forestry that fits the already existing user-groups of the forest.

Sealaska has shamed themselves, they have shamed us all.

Joseph Sebastian