Note: The opinions expressed in commentary on KCAW are those of the author(s), and are not necessarily shared by the station’s board, staff, or volunteers.
My name is Bethany Goodrich, and I wonder how many of you listening have also made your favorite memories on Kruzof Island? An Island so iconic, so important to our community, it’s part of our identity. If you care about Kruzof, listen up.
The Forest Service recently published draft Forest Plan material and maps that could shape the Tongass for decades. In those maps are some unnerving changes to zoning and allowed activity on Kruzof including the volcano that stands sentinel over our town. This new map would allow for high intensity commercial tourism use at Shoals Point, with dramatic changes that stretch right up to Edgecumbe crater. A third party could lease land, build a cruise ship dock and tourism infrastructure, maybe even a tram and bar, to a sacred place where many of us hunt, fish, play and depend on to escape. It could bring heavy traffic to the thickest stretch of herring spawn, where gray whale numbers are so dense, you have to crawl to avoid hitting them.
There are even wider proposed changes to much of Northern Kruzof, opening the Island we love to major development.
Now, I am not anti tourism. I understand that a balanced economy is the foundation of a healthy community, that there needs to be economic opportunities for my child and yours too. But the details matter. How we develop tourism, where and what we build matters. Alaska isn’t a bucket list location because of its landscaping. People come to Alaska, and Sitka in particular, because of the overwhelming wildness, the space, the abundance, the moments when you look around and realize you are in the most beautiful place on earth, with just the people you came with. When you pull up your first king salmon or hunt your first deer beside a wild volcano – you never forget that.
And once that’s gone, it’s gone forever. There are some places too special, too globally rare, too important to the character of our community, to develop for heavy tourism infrastructure. period.
The proposed maps and plan are about much more than just Kruzof. There’s good ideas, and bad ones. What’s important is that they weren’t drafted by the people who live here. That’s exactly why the Forest Service is hosting community meetings to hear from us. This plan will determine the forest our children inherit, it will shape the lands where they might fall in love, where they will challenge themselves physically and emotionally, where they might commercial fish or build a business, this plan might determine whether they choose to stay here at all. The decisions being rushed through right now are too important to be made FOR us, they must be made WITH us.
Kruzof is the backdrop to my most cherished memories: honing my hunting skills, catching waves, learning to camp in bear country, watching my baby splash inside a perfectly smooth lava tub. There comes a point, when you love a place so much– it becomes family. Kruzof is that for me, and I know I’m not alone. Her future, and the future of the lands and waters we all depend on- are in our hands.
My name is Bethany Goodrich and I will be seeing you at the Tongass Forest Plan community meeting Monday the 27th from 4-6 in Centennial Hall.
