text: I have to wonder how many people responding actually hike off trail in the Tongass? There is some acute ignorance on display. Old growth takes over 250 years to replenish and what comes back isn't the same. That means we're not seeing the very first clearcuts replenished yet and wont for a while let alone that cut in the last 50 years!
  
  Second growth is choked and no fun to navigate. Old growth is park like and wonderful to travel through.
  
  The fact is that there are no timber jobs in the Tongass that rely on clearcutting, aside from exporters. The mills are a joke and a sacred cow myth maintained to allow continued logging (all the companies profits come from exporting raw timber not from milled product sales). The loggers are from the lesser 48. And the roads get built then closed, entirely built with federal dollars. It is all a huge destructive scam