Senior Director, Conservation America Campaign
One of the issues that most reliably gets people excited and engaged is our campaign to defend our public lands, especially the Tongass National Forest. But why are people from California to Texas to Maine so passionate about a forest in remote southern Alaska? Much of that passion owes to the fact that some places stir the imagination and therefore, the soul. People also understand intuitively that the campaign to save the Tongass is about something larger than even that vast forest: It’s about what we value as a society.
Why do we need federal protection under the Clean Water Act if there are also state laws designed to protect our rivers and streams? The answer is that, all too often, state officials fail to enforce their own laws or side with politically-powerful polluters.