Fire in the hole: The Indigenous crews blasting the Tongass rainforest to save it

After a historic land buyback by the US Forest Service, Tlingit crew members are demolishing culverts to restore streams, salmon runs and cultural history deep in the national forest

Hillsides upstream of Kathleen Lake show past logging activity in the Cube Cove area of Admiralty Island. (U.S. Forest Service photo)

The morning begins with a sense of anticipation – the calm before 1,200lbs of explosives detonate a stream culvert buried 10ft in Alaska’s Tongass national forest.

Jamie Daniels, 53, and his crew of Tlingit forestry workers take cover in a glade of alders.

A few minutes earlier, together with the US Forest Service and a Southeast Alaska Watershed Coalition (SAWC) watershed scientist, they fed high-grade explosives into the galvanized aluminum culvert on a 40ft sled made of spruce trees. The goal now is to vaporize it, along with the rocks on top…(Read full story)