Why there won't be significant logging in the Tongass
The setting sun casts pink hues in the Craig District of the Tongass National Forest on June 15, 2020. (Photo by Amy Li/U.S. Forest Service)
Industrial-scale logging in the Tongass National Forest was due to monopolies created by the federal government and taxpayer subsidies.
Two proposed pulp mills were granted 50-year logging contracts in territorial days: Ketchikan Pulp Company in Ketchikan was awarded 8.25 billion board feet in 1951 and Alaska Pulp Company in Sitka 4.975 billion board feet in 1956.
Wrangell Lumber Company also received a 50-year contract that allowed them to harvest 60 million board feet of timber annually from the early 1960s until 1990. The sawmill minimally processed the trees into what are known as 'cants' and shipped them overseas.
The 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act exempted the Tongass from complying with the National Forest Management Act of 1976, which led to very low stumpage fees, or the cost timber harvesters had to pay the federal government. The U.S. Forest Service had to spend an enormous amount of staff time surveying timber tracts and building roads in remote areas.
A study by the Southeast Conservation Council calculated the federal government spent $386 million for preparation and sale of Tongass timber while collecting only $32 million in stumpage fees from 1982 to 1988.
While the heyday of the timber industry supported about 4,000 jobs, many were nonresidents or recent arrivals who left when the pulp mills closed. Most of my former colleagues at the Sitka mill went 'back home' to Washington when the mill ceased operation.
The pulp mills closed primarily because of tree farms in warmer climates such as South Africa, where forests grow much faster than the Tongass. Many fruit and vegetable farms in the southern U.S. converted to tree farms.
The 2016 Tongass Land and Resource Management Plan created a 16-year transition period from harvest of old growth trees to second-growth timber. The first 10 years would allow the annual cutting of 34 million board feet of old growth and 12 million board feet of second growth before shifting to 5 million board feet of old growth and 41 million board feet of second-growth trees.
This plan was upset by the 2001 'Roadless Rule,' which set aside 58.5 million acres of national forests, including 9.2 million acres in the Tongass. The national rule forbade 'road construction, road reconstruction and timber harvesting' in the set-aside acreage. The first Trump administration ended the Roadless Rule, but the Biden administration reinstated it. Now President Trump again wants to strike it down.
Second-growth forests require massive thinning operations in remote locations and very little thinning has been accomplished in the old clearcuts. The only trees with market value are old growth, which takes a century to reach maturity in the Tongass.
So, are there enough standing old-growth trees to support a vibrant timber industry in the Tongass? It depends upon who you ask.
As a young journalist in Ketchikan, I interviewed a couple of men who took part in the initial surveys of Tongass timber that helped support the 50-year contracts. They said the surveys were accomplished by flyovers with a very few boots on the ground, and grossly overestimated the volume of harvestable timber.
In a recent interview by the Juneau Empire, Joel Jackson, president of the Organized Village of Kake, pointed out that 'nobody touched' numerous past timber sales on Kupreanof and Kuiu islands, as the cost of accessing the trees and getting them to market overwhelmed the market value.
If the 'DOGE' cuts to the U.S. Forest Service are left in place, the foresters would be hard-pressed to do the groundwork necessary to make sales.
Those looking to resurrect industrial-scale logging in the Tongass are chasing an old dream that fails to recognize the current importance of tourism, which relies upon healthy forests and wildlife. The salmon fishermen of the Tongass need healthy streams, not clearcuts.
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