Fire in the hole: the Indigenous crews blasting the Alaskan rainforest to save it

The 17m-acre Tongass is by far the largest national forest in the United States. Photograph: blickwinkel/Alamy

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.