Chugach National Forest

The Chugach National Forest is a National Forest in the U.S. state of Alaska. It covers an area of ​​23,000 km ² in Southcentral Alaska from the river delta of the Copper River in the east over the Prince William Sound to the Kenai Peninsula in the West. To the north it borders on Alaska's youngest mountain range, the Chugach Mountains. It consists of the terranes Chugach and Prince William.

The Chugach National Forest was reported on the initiative of William Langille, who later became manager of the Tongass National Forest, on 23 July 1907 by Theodore Roosevelt. The aim was to protect the trees, to regulate hunting and fishing and to introduce an organized fire protection. The National Forest is the northernmost and the second largest in the United States Forest Service. The Forestry Commission is located in Anchorage.

Flora and Fauna

The Chugach National Forest consists largely of coastal rain forest with Sitka spruce, hemlock, birch and aspen. Clearings grow forest fireweed, lupine, hogweed, meadow foam herb and Sitka valerian. Above the tree line, thicket, has made inter alia of alder and devil lobes, the only representative of the ginseng family in Alaska. In higher regions are spreading subalpine meadows that eventually merge into tundra.

In the located on the Kenai Peninsula portion of the Chugach National Forest, almost all land mammals of Alaska occur. At the Copper River birds have an ideal habitat. Riverside brooding about 12,000 Dusky Canada Geese, a subspecies which occurs only here, and a tenth of the world population of trumpeter swans.