An overview of science contributions to the management of the Tongass National Forest, Alaska

Boyce, Douglas A.; Szaro, Robert C.

doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2004.09.020

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Because 80% of the Alexander Archipelago falls within the jurisdiction of the USFS, the current revision of the TLMP is an opportunity to incorporate research on endemic mammals into contemporary land management planning in a way that reflects the archipelagic complexity of this national forest. The USFS Pacific Northwest Research Station played a central role in addressing knowledge gaps identified during the drafting of the 1997 TLMP (Boyce and Szaro 2005), but resulting inventories of endemics were limited (Hanley et al 2005). Future planning efforts should prioritize island endemics as indicators of overall landscape health and predictors of environmental change and long‐term sample archival with biorepositories.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Unlike the Haida Gwaii Management Council's holistic approach, the current TLMP focuses primarily on timber resource management (Orians and Schoen 2013) in response to the history of industrial‐scale logging in Southeast Alaska, which removed 31.8% of large‐tree (high volume), old‐growth stands in the Tongass National Forest (Albert and Schoen 2013). Although an external scientific review of the TLMP in 1997 (Shaw et al 2000, Boyce and Szaro 2005, Smith 2005) prompted the inclusion of monitoring of endemics, subsequent revisions of the plan (USFS 2008, 2016) continued to focus on old‐growth‐dependent species and failed to maintain meaningful monitoring of endemics. While old‐growth forests are an undeniably valuable natural resource, isolated patches of old‐growth forest are insufficient to sustain many sensitive island populations, especially endemics (Smith and Flaherty 2023), and second‐growth forests in Southeast Alaska will not provide habitat for most wildlife for many decades (Parker et al 1996).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Phylogeography of mammals in Southeast Alaska and implications for management of the Tongass National Forest

Androski,

Wiens,

Cook

et al. 2024

J Wildl Manag

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Insular evolution on archipelagos generates a significant proportion of global biodiversity, yet islands are among the ecosystems most sensitive to accelerating anthropogenic disturbance, introductions of non‐native species, and emerging pathogens, among other conservation challenges. The Alexander and Haida Gwaii archipelagos along North America's North Pacific Coast support a disproportionate number of endemic taxa compared to other high‐latitude terrestrial ecosystems. In this region, endemics in Canada are explicitly protected, but in the United States, endemics have been operationally ignored. We reviewed regional research on terrestrial mammals and endemics from 2000–2022 to guide wildlife management. Elevated regional endemism is due to a combination of deep and shallow temporal processes (i.e., long‐term refugial isolation vs. recent colonization). With adequate sampling, genomic analyses are well‐suited to identifying nuanced patterns of divergence and endemism, thereby facilitating a deeper understanding of regional diversity. We identified 18 mammalian endemics in Southeast Alaska, USA, at varying taxonomic scales, but research effort has significant taxonomic biases and sampling infrastructure remains inadequate. Of the 66 terrestrial and aquatic mammal species in Southeast Alaska, only 55% are represented by ≥10 archived samples over the last 2 decades. Across taxa, major spatial and temporal sampling gaps limit interpretations of wildlife responses to changing environmental conditions. The Tongass National Forest is spread across an island archipelago, and climate change is projected to have disproportionate impacts on island endemics worldwide. In this case, the United States Forest Service is not closely monitoring endemic taxa, as was required by the Tongass Land Management Plan in 1997. Our review underscores a need for increased consideration of how endemism can be incorporated into land and wildlife management across the Alexander Archipelago. Moving forward, we encourage state and federal agencies, Indigenous communities, and international collaborators to continue to partner with natural history biorepositories to ensure strategic wildlife sampling infrastructure is built and made accessible to the broader scientific community as part of the land management process.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%