Southeast Alaska Is Our Home
And we’re here to protect it
The Southeast Alaska Conservation Council is a homegrown conservation group of Southeast Alaskans fiercely fighting to protect our home: the ancient and mighty Tongass National Forest and the crisp, vibrant waters of the Inside Passage.
This is our backyard. We’ve been protecting it for over 50 years, and continue today.
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Our Work
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Tell DOWA to stop funding the Palmer Mine!
Japanese smelter company DOWA Metals and Mining has taken control of the Palmer Mine Project at the headwaters of the Chilkat Watershed. Not only does the mine project threaten the Chilkat Watershed’s biological diversity, pristine water, and the downstream communities of Haines and Klukwan, but it’s a boondoggle, unlikely to generate profitable returns. Send this letter DOWA today, telling them to stop funding the mine!
Southeast Alaska Is Under Threat, and We’re Doing Something About It
We are facing daily, hostile threats to our environment and way of life in Southeast Alaska.
Out-of-touch Alaska politicians want to repeal decades-old safeguards on the Tongass to open it up to clearcut logging and road building. National, state, and local agencies constantly propose new timber sales to clearcut the forest. The mining industry here in Alaska and across the border in Canada willfully ignores environmental regulations and tries to extract more and more minerals from the earth’s near-critical salmon-producing watersheds.
On top of it all, Alaska is on the front lines of climate change, warming twice as fast as the rest of the country.
All of this threatens the 35 communities that make up Southeast Alaska.
We are commercial fishermen. We are hikers and kayakers. We are small business owners. We are Alaska Natives. We are hunters. We are parents, grandparents, and youth. We are family. And we are here to say enough.
To us, Southeast Alaska, though beautiful, is not just pretty scenery. It is where we live, work, and play. We rely on this living forest and its waterways for food, jobs, clean air, and water.
SEACC has galvanized our supporters into action to successfully protect this place for over 50 years. We are a truly grassroots advocacy nonprofit organization, supported by the members who work with us to take action. We use our collective regional voice — united by the love of this special place — to win in the courtroom, to watchdog harmful industries, and to advocate for laws that point us toward a more sustainable future.
We are Southeast Alaskans: this is our home. And we’re not going anywhere.
What We’re Working On
Tongass National Forest
With its ancient, towering trees and pristine waterways teeming with salmon, the lush Tongass National Forest spans Southeast Alaska’s panhandle and is the largest national forest in the United States. We work to protect, restore and honor this living temperate rainforest — traditional homelands of the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian peoples — that drives our region’s economy and sustains us with food, jobs, and clean air and water.
Inside Passage Waters
Southeast Alaska is as much water as it is land. Here, the interconnected web of the Inside Passage is home to lush wild salmon rivers and immense watersheds that feed the trees of the Tongass and the oceans of the world. It is a place teeming with biodiversity — from whales and wolves, to eagles, deer and bears, to salmon and communities.
Grassroots Community Organizing
![“Canada’s mining in our shared rivers is one of the biggest threats to our wild salmon and our Indigenous way of life,” [Chalyee Éesh Richard Peterson, president of the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska] said in a written statement. “In the face of a rapidly changing climate, British Columbia continues to permit massive open-pit gold mines in the headwaters of our largest salmon producing rivers – without the consent of downstream Tribes.
“Our way of life depends upon the health of our transboundary waters and we will not stop until we can ensure the environmental security and stability of our shared rivers. We have been calling on the United States and Canada to honor their legal and ethical obligations and to act immediately to protect our traditional territories from legacy, on-going, and proposed mining in British Columbia. We must get ahead of this before it’s too late.”
Read “Alaska tribes join with Lower 48 allies to seek protections from impacts of Canadian mines” via Alaska Beacon at 🔗 bit.ly/3iMqQ0C.](https://www.seacc.org/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)
Happening Now
Comment now on the Glacier Bay National Park Draft Marine Management Plan!
The Glacier Bay National Park Draft Marine Management Plan is out for public review and comment with a deadline of Friday, Dec. 30, 2022. We are heartened to see the shifting tides which show deeper consultation with Huna and Yakutat Tlingit people and recognition of the values of the Huna Tlingit...
Organizing for Success in this Legislature
Sometimes these monthly climate updates are all over the place — a mix of personal anecdotes, good news, and bad. This month, and for the next few months, they’re going to be more focused. That’s because SEACC has some very clear goals for our Climate Program work between now and the end of the...
Heather Evoy’s SEACC Travel Series Recap
If you follow us on social media, you might have noticed how, every Sunday, I recapped a trip I made in Southeast Alaska (and beyond) on behalf of SEACC with a focus on food security and food sovereignty — two topics I found to be recurring themes throughout my travels. It’s been wonderful being...
You could win big this Giving Tuesday!
Donations must be made on Giving Tuesday (Nov. 29), between midnight and 11:59 p.m. Alaska Time to enter the giveaways and be qualified for the match. Giving Tuesday is a global movement towards a stronger spirit of generosity. Created in response to the chaotic consumerism of Black Friday, Giving...