Come with me now to a beautiful place. Come with me to Alaska to the Tongass National Forest.

Not perhaps Longfellow's forest primeval, but about as close as you'll get in the 21st century to nature before we touched it.

These seventeen million acres compose the biggest forest left in the United States and the largest rainforest in a temperate zone left in the world.

All you have to do here is open your eyes and ears and breathe deeply. Nature does the rest.

Much of the Tongas is still protected against development, we humans haven't left a deep footprint here. That may change. Until recently there was a ban on building new roads through more than half of this forest. Two days before Christmas, at the height of the holiday rush, President Bush gave the green light to new roads and the logging and mining that follow them.

Officials in Alaska want more development on public lands and the jobs they hope come with it. Companies, of course, want the profits.

Officials say only 3 percent of the protected forest area will be affected, only 300,000 acres. Conservationists figure that as many as two and a half million acres of wilderness and waterways could be affected. We'll see.

Listen. Take another look. Breathe deeply one more time and relax.

There's a very experienced man to take care of the Tongass for us. Mark Rey's his name.

Once upon a time he lobbied for the timber and paper industries. Companies that gave millions of dollars to the winning ticket in the last election. Now Mark Rey is the Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment at the Agriculture Department, the guardian of our forests.

- 9 January 2004, Bill Moyers