Petersburg Ranger District, Tongass National Forest
Attention: Tiffany Benna, Team Leader
Port Houghton/Cape Fanshaw Landscape Assessment
P.O. Box 1328
Petersburg, AK 99833

RE: Comments on logging in Port Houghton and Cape Fanshaw

Dear Team Leader Benna,

I urge the Forest Service to abandon any plans or proposals to build roads or cut down trees in the Port Houghton/Cape Fanshaw area.

As you know, the Tongass is the largest intact coastal temperate rainforest in the world--important habitat for grizzly bear, bald eagles, and salmon. Though it remains the heart of the earth's largest, intact temperate rainforest, the Tongass has lost roughly a million acres of prime, old-growth forest over the past half century to clearcut logging and the construction of access roads. Today, about four million acres of old growth remain. The world's largest concentration of bald eagles lives in the Tongass. Drawn by salmon runs and prime nesting sites in towering trees, as many as 2,000 bald eagles gather in some parts of the forest each spring.

The Port Houghton/Cape Fanshaw area is the largest unbroken tract of unprotected old growth forest left in the Tongass National Forest. Its awe-inspiring landscapes and abundant wildlife are unsurpassed anywhere on the planet. Destroying it through a commercial timber sale would be a travesty.

Any logging project would not only obliterate a roadless area, but would likely increase taxpayer subsidies and also endanger local industries such as sportfishing, commercial fishing, tourism, and hunting. I urge you to put an end to any further discussion of logging in Port Houghton or Cape Fanshaw.

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