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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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
Happening Now
Press Release: Groups Challenge State of Alaska Over Flawed Mine Water Permit
Regional groups seek tougher standards to protect Chilkat Watershed from Palmer Project wastewater HAINES, ALASKA DEISHÚ/LḴÓOT AND JILḴÁAT KWÁAN, November 1, 2023 — Conservation organizations challenged a controversial wastewater discharge permit for the Palmer Project, a proposed multi-metals...
Hearing alert: Landless Bill hearing at 10:30 a.m. today — Comment Now through Nov. 2
This morning, at 10:30 am Alaska time, the Senate Subcommittee on Public Lands, Forests and Mining is having a hearing on pending legislation that includes three bills sponsored by Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, including S.1889: the ‘Unrecognized Southeast...
A personal note from the Executive Director
It is with deep gratitude and appreciation that I am writing you today to share that I plan to transition out of the Executive Director role at SEACC in early 2024. Leading SEACC over the last seven plus years has been the journey — and privilege — of a lifetime, and getting to serve the people,...
After a summer of climate chaos, I’m ready for change
The news this summer has, frankly, been overwhelming — even for someone like me who has the privilege of being paid to pay attention to climate change. The disastrous Suicide Basin flood of the Mendenhall River. The landslides in downtown Juneau that now seem almost routine. A summer so wet and...