WASHINGTON – For the second time since it was created in 2001, a rule banning timber harvesting on millions of acres in national forests has been modified to exclude the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska. But, harvesting projects there likely will be slow to start because of fears that the ruling will be overturned again, according to a U.S. Forest Service official.
In 2003, the Tongass obtained exempt status from the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, but lost it in 2011. The state of Alaska appealed that 2011 decision and won on March 26.
Charles Streuli, a forest management staff officer for the Forest Service in Alaska, described the back and forth of the courts as like being on a roller coaster. “We’ve been on level ground for a while,” he said
To begin harvesting new lands, the Forest Service must complete environmental surveys of the land. These surveys take an average of four years and $3 million to complete. With the courts going back and forth on the exemption from the roadless rule in the last few years, it would not be worth it to start planning projects in the previously prohibited area yet, Streuli said.
In addition, Forest Service goals in the Tongass have shifted.
In the next 10 to 15 years, the Forest Service will start to harvest smaller, younger trees found on land previously harvested, and move away from the larger old growth. This transition began back in 2010.
Trees grow rapidly from sapling until they become big enough that they start to compete with neighboring trees for space and sunlight. When the growth slows down, that is the optimum time for harvesting, Streuli said.
“We would do it in a heartbeat if we had trees that were old enough and big enough to be profitable,” he said. “We just don’t have the acreage of young trees to sell right now.”
The 2001 regulation prohibits the building of roads and timber harvesting on more than 58 million acres of national forest land. With the exemption, the Tongass has about 300,000 more acres to harvest, Streuli said. But the area with timber worth collecting does not seem that big when compared with the size of the whole forest – about 16.8 million acres – he said.
Conservation groups, however, are against the roadless rule exemption and second growth harvesting. They argue that all timber sales should cease in the Tongass.
Quick Facts: The Tongass National Forest
The Tongass National Forest is the nation’s largest national forest and is also the largest temperate rainforest in the U.S.
It encompasses about 16.8 million acres of islands and land in Southeast Alaska, including Juneau.
The forest is about the size of West Virginia and has 10 Ranger Districts.
About 70,000 people in 32 communities live in the Tongass.
There are currently no registered threatened or endangered species, though many conservation groups are lobbying that the Alexander Archipelago Wolf may be endangered due to timber harvesting and development.
Timber harvested from the Tongass is used to make Steinway pianos.
The Tongass also produces large quantities of salmon and other fish. In 2013, the Chigach and the Tongass hit a new record in fishing, catching and selling more than 272 million fish.
*Information courtesy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service.
“The logging is unsustainable,” Larry Edwards, an Alaska Forest Campaigner of Greenpeace, said. “We need a hiatus for a while.”
Continued harvesting in the Tongass releases large amounts of stored carbon dioxide in the soil and trees into the atmosphere, which could have serious environmental implications, Edwards said. He also said that the harvesting destroys the habitats of animals like the Alexander Archipelago Wolf, unique to Southeast Alaska.
“Southeast Alaska’s Alexander Archipelago is like the Galapagos,” said Paul Olsen, board president of the Greater Southeast Alaska Conservation Community. “It is an island ecosystem rich in biodiversity that hosts numerous unique, or endemic, wildlife species of global significance found nowhere else in the world.”
Without the roadless rule, Olsen said, species like the archipelago wolf and the northern flying squirrel will not be protected.
Greg Killinger, a fish, wildlife, watershed and soils staff officer for the Forest Service, said that despite many common misconceptions, about 95 percent of the Tongass is still pristine wilderness, even with timber harvesting.
Part of Killinger’s job in the Tongass is to design and execute restoration projects for the watersheds that were damaged by timber collectors in 1980s and 1990s.
Greenpeace and the Greater Southeast Alaska Conservation Community argue that the restoration projects needed after timber sales actually make timber harvesting a drain on the economy, rather than a boost. Taxpayer money, they argue, goes to fixing the environment the harvesters ruined.
“Overall in the forest service and in timber operations in the forest, people do really care about the environment and really take it seriously,” Streuli said. “People aren’t just tree-cutting mongers. I think people really do care. But, you can’t please everybody all the time.”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, welcomed the exemption from the roadless rule, saying it is sure to be a boost for the Southeast Alaskan economy, if the ruling holds, that is.
Murkowski argued in a U.S. Forest Service budget hearing in April that Alaska timber sales and the economy in Southeast Alaska have suffered because of the roadless rule. “I’m not sure we can hold on much longer,” she told Tim Caldwell, chief of the U.S. Forest Service.
“The 2011 ruling by the district court has already done its damage to the people in Southeast Alaska, who rely on the Tongass to help them put food on their tables,” Murkowski said in a statement released on the day of the ruling. “I applaud the 9th Circuit for righting that wrong today.”