The forest is our pantry: Alaska national forests support abundant wild foods

Rural communities bordering the Tongass National Forest harvest more than 4.5 million pounds of wild food per year, including 100 different species that our public lands help support. Just how much food is this? An average quarter-pound cheeseburger might weigh around 6 oz, depending on your toppings of choice. Assuming a 6-oz weight, the wild food harvests in this region are equivalent to more than 12 million cheeseburgers a year. To replace the same amount wild foods with grocery store purchases, it would cost these communities about $41 million. 

These numbers come from work led by Ryan Bellmore, a Forest Service research biologist with the Pacific Northwest (PNW) Research Station, and Marie Gutgesell, a research fellow with Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, hosted by the PNW Research Station, along with key tribal, state and non-governmental organization partners.

Everyone has to eat, and food-related research often focuses on how commercial and cultivated food systems can meet society’s needs. Commercial and cultivated systems are certainly a key piece of the food security puzzle, but the often-overlooked piece that helps complete that puzzle is wild food systems, especially those supported by our Forest Service public landscapes. 

Wild food systems comprise of a diverse array of naturally occurring foods and medicines that help meet key nutritional and cultural needs for billions of people around the world. In Alaska, wild foods, and the public forests that support them, include a vast assortment of species—some of which may immediately come to mind when you think of a “forest”—such as deer, berries, and mushrooms. Others, like salmon, halibut, and crab, may not immediately come to mind as being forest-related species, but it’s important to think of national forests and their surrounding areas as interconnected landscapes. Forests in the region contribute large amounts of water and nutrients to rivers, lakes, and marine habitats, which help sustain wild food systems. Forest management is about more than just the trees, it supports abundant wild foods in freshwater, coastal intertidal, and nearshore marine habitats.

These wild food systems are not only important sources of nutrition for the communities that rely on them, but they also serve as a key cultural, spiritual, and economic linchpin for rural and tribal communities, many of which border Alaska’s two national forests, the Tongass National Forest and the Chugach National Forest.

Forest Service research is providing information that can be used to integrate wild food systems planning into Alaska land management to support human health, nutrition, and access to quality foods. 

The story isn’t just about how much food is harvested by the dozens of rural Alaska communities that rely on these key public lands, it’s also about understanding the factors that maintain stable and reliable wild food harvests through time, which help ensure future harvests. The research team analyzed wild food harvest data collected by the State of Alaska for 46 rural communities; looking at the when, where, and what types of wild foods the communities bordering the Tongass and Chugach National Forests harvested. 

Their analysis shows that access to a diverse portfolio of wild foods is tied to more reliable harvests over time. The availability of diverse wild foods allows communities to change their harvesting decisions as wild food resources fluctuate through time, creating more resilient and food secure communities. For example, in years when salmon are less available, communities can compensate by harvesting more deer, and vice versa. This suggests that managing forests in ways that sustain wild food diversity and accessibility can help communities adapt to changing conditions.

This can help public land managers with forest planning, ensuring that their management dollars spent can have the most impact on supporting the ecological, economic, and social needs of the land. Wild food harvests can vary dramatically based on what resources—such as cabins, roads, and boat launches—are available, as well as what month of the year (think growing seasons for plants or fish migratory patterns) the harvest occurs in.

By compiling this information, Bellmore and the team aim to support Alaska’s land managers in framing their scope of work by providing insights into how national forests can be managed to promote accessible and productive wild foods that are integral to the health and resilience of rural communities that depend on their nearby public lands.