LUTHERAN QUILTERS – Members of the Quilts for Comfort Group stand between pews draped with some of the 205 quilts they made, in the Sitka Lutheran Church Tuesday. The group made the quilts for five local non-profits and one in Anchorage. The remaining quilts are sent to Lutheran World Relief which  distributes them to places around the world in need, such as Ukraine, as part of Personal Care Kits. Pictured are, from left, Helen Cunningham, Kathleen Brandt,Vicki Swanson, Paulla Hardy, Kim Hunter, Linda Swanson and Sue Fleming.  (Sentinel Photo by James Poulson)

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Daily Sitka Sentinel

Sitka Trails Added to Old Growth Network

By GARLAND KENNEDY

Sentinel Staff Writer

A group of about 20 Sitkans gathered Friday beneath a towering forest canopy to celebrate the importance of old-growth forests and highlight the need to protect such areas from heavy industry.

They were at the Herring Cove and Beaver Lake trail to join representatives of the Old-Growth Forest Network as the organization formally added the Beaver Lake and Salmon Lake trails to their national catalog of old-growth forests.

Ben Hughey, Sitka Trail Works director, left, holds an Old-Growth Forest Network sign with Sarah Adloo, Old-Growth Forest Network co-executive director, center, and Joan Maloof at the entrance of Herring Cove Trail Monday. (Sentinel Photo by Garland Kennedy)

The network identifies areas of mature forest that are accessible to hiking and are protected from commercial logging, said Old-Growth Forest Network co-executive director Sarah Adloo.

“We’re a national nonprofit that looks to identify and catalog remaining old growth forests throughout the U.S.,” Adloo said. “We’re looking specifically at ones that people can go to and feel connected to see truly what forests look like when we let time do its magic there and we’ve left them aside from commercial logging and we’ve let them return to that kind of forest.”

With her training in forestry and conservation, Adloo stressed the diversity of a landscape within an old-growth forest.

There is “something special, not only ecologically about old growth forests, where you get this tremendous sense of biodiversity, and carbon storage and you’ve got these species that can only exist in places where that forest has not been disturbed for hundreds of years, but the undeniable, spiritual connection to the forest that we have, and we experienced,” she told the Sentinel while hiking through a mixed stand of spruce and hemlock. “You think about ‘time immemorial,’ and landscapes and old growth forests are just what comes to mind.”

The organization worked with Sitka Tribe of Alaska, the U.S. Forest Service and Sitka Conservation Society to choose two stands of Tongass old-growth trees for the trail network. Founder and co-executive director Joan Maloof hopes that by adding a stand of old-growth to the group’s list, people will be more inclined to protect it.

“When I first started the organization… I saw that we had hardly any original forests left in the east – only one percent, but there are some pockets,” Maloof said. “And so I was trying to connect people with these pockets of old-growth so they can understand what they look like, so the next generation would want to protect them and also make sure that the one percent that’s left got preserved, and maybe some older second growth forests got preserved too.”

While adding a forest to the network doesn’t confer any legal guarantees, Maloof said the group aims to construct a network of people invested in the protection of old-growth forests.

“Although being in the network doesn’t give it any additional legal protection, I feel like it gives it cultural protection,” Maloof said. “So I like to say we’re not just building a network of forests, we’re also building a network of people who care about forests.”

The group has recognized well over a hundred sites in the Lower 48, but Alaskan forests have been added only in recent days.

“We wanted to start in the Tongass, because it’s important politically,” Maloof said. “And we’ve spoken out for it so often as an organization that it was important to me to actually experience it, to breathe the air.”

Prior to coming to Sitka, the network was in Skagway to add the Jánwu Sít’i, or Mountain Goat Glacier trail, to the roster. The three Alaskan trails join a list that includes American icons such as the Giant Forest in Sequoia National Park and the Mariposa Grove in Yosemite National Park.

More information, including a map of forests in the network, is posted online at oldgrowthforest.net.

There isn’t one scientific definition of old growth Maloof said.

“But to me it means primarily a forest that has never been cut down by humans,” she said. “It might have suffered wind storms that may have had impact down there or even had a fire go through at some time, but we’ve never turned it into a field of stumps.”

In the case of the Herring Cove and Beaver Lake trail, a handful of massive stumps bear witness to logging done near the beach in decades past, but the remainder of the route climbs through an undisturbed mixed forest of spruce, hemlock and cedar. Some trees by the trail are centuries-old giants. A few miles south at Salmon Lake, similarly enormous conifers fill the valley, though the area isn’t undisturbed. The remnants of an old corduroy road that once led to mining operations on Lucky Chance Mountain can still be seen in the valley. Where trees were cut to make room for the road, there remains a thin strip of forest populated by alders, rather than by evergreens.

At the brief dedication ceremony, U.S. Forest Service Sitka District Ranger Eric Garner underscored his lifelong love of forests.

“One of the things that’s near and dear to me is that we take care of our forests and our lands,” he said. “And that’s always a challenge… (in) what we call ‘the land and many uses and multiple uses.’ And so in this day and age, what I really love is we collaborate with our partners around it.”

The Old-Growth Forest Network reached out to Sitka Conservation Society executive director Andrew Thoms for help selecting areas of old growth for adding to the network.

“The network got in touch with us, and asked us what forest best exemplified some of the old-growth forests and the places that people went to,” Thoms said. “And this one really stood out to me, we have this beautiful trail that’s now maintained. But before that, there was always a trail here, and the access up to here probably goes back thousands and thousands of years from all the people who lived here. This fjord in back of us is super rich with salmon and sea life, and this forest is really rich with animals and beautiful trees and fungus and berries.”

While the woodland around Beaver Lake and Herring Cove is colluvial due to its location beneath the steep slopes of Bear Mountain, Thoms noted that the Salmon Lake valley is different.

“That’s an alluvial forest. And that’s a very important salmon forest,” he said. “Right now, there’s just about all five species of salmon in that valley, and three species of trout and maybe one other wayward species of trout that could get there. And that forest is massively productive. And one of the most amazing places on both the Sitka Ranger District and on the Tongass as a whole,” he told the group assembled at the trailhead.

When visitors from out of town see Sitka’s towering old-growth, they might be more inclined to protect forests near their own homes, said Laurie Booyse, another Sitkan attending the event.

“When people come and experience our forests and see that this still exists, I’m hoping that they take that home with them, and they want to protect their own forests wherever they live,” said Booyse, who is director of Visit Sitka. “So I think that the Tongass is a magical forest on many levels, and there’s nothing like being out with the trees.”

For much of the dedication event and subsequent hike, a light rain fell and low cloud cover shrouded the nearby mountains. But where the trail reaches an open muskeg above Beaver Lake, several mountains broke through the weather and towered above the landscape.

When the group arrived at Beaver Lake, Debbie Miller read a passage from “The Island Within,” a book by Sitka naturalist Richard Nelson, who died in 2019.

“Following a conspicuous deer trail, I move into a forest of old, towering trees, so thickly mantled with boughs that only flecks of sky are visible overhead… According to Koyukon elders, the tree I lean against feels me, it hears what I say about it, and engages me in a moral reciprocity based on responsible use,” Miller read. “In their tradition, the forest is both a provider and a community of spiritually empowered beings. There is no emptiness in the forest, no unwatched, solitude.”

On her first ever visit to the Tongass, Maloof was blown away by the landscape.

“I’m just glowing, thinking I am in the Tongass… When I walk through these forests, I get goosebumps. I feel a sort of elation and joy,” she said.

Around the country, she hopes to connect people to old-growth forests in their locale.

“There are a lot of people that want to experience places like this but they don’t know how to find them,” she said. “So we help them find them so they can experience them and introduce the next generation to them.”

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20 YEARS AGO

March 2004

Advertisement: Tea-Licious Tea House & Bakery 315 Lincoln Street Grand Opening! Freshly Baked Scones, Cakes & Pastries Innovative Salads, Soups & Sandwiches Harney & Sons Tea. Lunch * Afternoon Tea * Supper.

50 YEARS AGO

March 1974

Photo caption: National Republican Chairman George Bush takes a drink of water offered by Jan Craddick, Sitka delegate, during the Republican convention held here. Mrs. Craddick explained to Bush that the water was from Indian River, which means, according to local legend, that he will return.

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