(Posted March 20, 2006)

HUNTINGDON, Pa. -- Alaskan adventurer and environmental activist Keith Nyitray, will lecture at Juniata College while presenting a slide show on Alaska's Tongass National Forest, "Roads to Nowhere," at 7 p.m., Thursday, March 30 in Room A202 in the Brumbaugh Academic Center on the Juniata campus.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

The slide show documents the environmental impact of the countless logging roads that have been carved out in the largest national forest in the United States. He will show how these untended roads degrade wildlife habitat and impact the quality of drinking water and watersheds in the forest.

Nyitray is a naturalist and outdoorsman who has taken part in mountaineering expeditions and a solo traverse of Alaska's Brooks Mountain Range. He earned a bachelor's degree in environmental resources management from Syracuse University

He has lived in Alaska for more than 25 years, first as a homesteader in the Alaskan backcountry and later as a commercial fisherman. He currently lectures in Alaska and across the United States.

The Tongass National Forest covers most of southeast Alaska, comprising about 17 million acres. The forest is home to many different types of wildlife, including grizzly bears, salmon, bald eagles and other species. The Tongass is the world's largest temperate rain forest, but about half of it is covered by ice, water, wetlands and rock. The forest has more than 11,000 miles of coastline and features miles of glaciers within the varied climates in the forest.

Contact April Feagley at feaglea@juniata.edu or (814) 641-3131 for more information.