SE Alaska Indigenous Stewards Forest Partnership

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Southeast Alaska Watershed Coalition

Southeast Alaska is a place where salmon still fill the streams and bears still roam the forest. Despite having healthy salmon runs that support a large fishing economy, many of the region’s watersheds suffer from the legacy of industrial logging and land development. As a result of heavy logging in these watersheds, sections of the streams are over-widened, featureless, and channelized. These watersheds are culturally and economically important to numerous small, remote Native Alaskan communities which have subsisted on natural resources here since time immemorial.

A locally-led conservation initiative, led by the Southeast Alaska Watershed Coalition (SAWC), in partnership with Tribal organizations, local landowners, public agencies, and many conservation partners focuses on restoring these important salmon watersheds by supporting Tribal forest partnerships across the Region. These community-based partnerships create local jobs and increase capacity for Tribally led watershed stewardship that excel at hand-tool stream habitat restoration, riparian tree thinning, and watershed and culvert inventory work. This stream habitat restoration adds woody habitat features back into these streams, immediately improving habitat complexity and juvenile salmon productivity, allowing young riparian tree stands to grow and naturally contribute wood to these streams in the future.