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 Tongass national forest
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.
Crouched 1,000ft away from the blast site, Jack Greenhalgh, the US Forest Service master blaster veteran, shouts: “Fire in the hole!”
