Robert Bonnie, the U.S. Agriculture Department’s undersecretary for natural resources and the environment, talks about the Tongass transition during a press conference Nov. 19, 2014. (Ed Schoenfeld/CoastAlaska News)

A top Forest Service official says fewer unprocessed logs will be sold overseas under a transition to harvesting younger trees.

About half of the timber cut in the Tongass National Forest is shipped in the round. That means it’s not milled, which could boost the region’s economy.

Robert Bonnie is the federal Agriculture Department’s undersecretary for natural resources and the environment.

“Ideally, the more local jobs we can provide from timber, the better. I think part of the … market challenge is making sure we’ve got a viable timber program,” Bonnie says.

The change from old- to second-growth logging is expected to take 10 to 15 years. Critics say that’s too slow.

Tongass officials say existing mills cannot handle a large amount of second-growth timber. They say one or more new plants will be needed.

Tongass Supervisor Forrest Cole says one business tried to fill that void.

“The veneer plant that was built in Ketchikan, shortly after the long-term contracts went away, required about 20 million board feet of small logs in order to process. Had that been here, that log that is currently going overseas would have been processed locally,” he says.

Officials say they’re working with private landowners to develop a cooperative logging plan.

Alaska Regional Forester Beth Pendleton says the Tongass has about a half-million acres of second-growth trees that could be harvested. Another half-million are on state or Native corporation land.

“Part of the transition is working with those landowners, working with Sealaska, working with the other corporations, working with the state, looking where we actually will move forward with harvesting second-growth and planning sales and looking at opportunities to maximize economic efficiencies and working with our adjacent landowners,” she says.

The officials spoke at a Wednesday press conference in Juneau.

They were on their way to Sitka for the Tongass Advisory Committee meeting. The Forest Service appointed the 15-member panel to help plan the transition from old-growth to young-growth logging.

Part of the Tongass National Forest, on mainland between Wrangell and Petersburg, is seen in this view from an airplane.  (Ed Schoenfeld/CoastAlaska News)

Representatives from across Southeast and the country will meet in Sitka this week to hash out timber issues on the Tongass.

It’s the fourth meeting of the Tongass Advisory Committee, which is working with the U.S. Forest Service as it tries to switch its focus from old-growth logging to harvesting smaller, younger trees.

In 2010, the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced the “transition” on the Tongass, to phase out old-growth timber sales in the nation’s largest national forest. The goal is to build a timber industry focused on second-growth trees, and provide an economic boost for the region.

But that transition has not moved as a fast as some hoped.

The advisory committee was created this year to help move the process forward. That is no easy task, said Andrew Thoms, a committee member and the executive director of the Sitka Conservation Society.

“The major sticking points are that the Forest Service, and I think most people in Southeast Alaska, want to see some sort of a timber industry that uses the timber resources that we have in the Tongass,” Thoms said. “But figuring out how to do that in a way that creates a sustainable long-term yield, and is economical, without causing environmental damage, is really a difficult mixture to figure out.”

There are 15 committee members, including representatives from the timber industry, commercial fishing, tribal groups, and local governments, as well as conservationists like Thoms.

They are being asked to reconcile the needs of those warring factions into a set of recommendations for the Tongass Land Management Plan. That’s the document that governs who can do what, and where, on the Tongass.

Regional Forester Beth Pendleton says those recommendations are due soon.

“They are working under a pretty tight time frame,” Pendleton said. “With the expectation of providing those recommendations to the Forest Service, [in] late winter, early spring.”

Committee members will hear from Tongass Supervisor Forrest Cole. They will also present their work to Department of Agriculture Undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment Robert Bonnie.

The committee will meet at Sitka’s Sheet’ka Kwaan Naa Kahidi on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, Nov. 19-21, starting at 8 a.m. The meetings are open to the public, and there is a public comment period on Friday, at 8:15 a.m.

The three previous meetings were held in Juneau, Ketchikan and on Prince of Wales Island.

Greg Killinger in his element: On the water in Sitka Sound in 2013. (SCS photo/Bethany Goodrich)

Greg Killinger was a career Forest Service employee who — had he wanted to — could have worked anywhere in the system. When the 52-year-old’s body was found last Sunday (5-25-14) on Sitka’s Mt. Verstovia trail — an apparent heart attack — the news was met with shock and disbelief.

A memorial for Greg Killinger is planned for noon, Saturday May 31, at St. Gregory’s Catholic Church in Sitka. To learn more about Killinger’s career, visit the Tongass National Forest website.

“Staff officer” has got to be the most unglamorous job title in the National Forest Service. But it can be packed with meaning and responsibility, depending on the person who carries it.

“I can’t describe the hole that he’s left behind.”

Forrest Cole is the Tongass Forest supervisor. He says Greg Killinger was active in projects in fisheries, wildlife, watersheds, ecology, and subsistence.

Killinger was basically everything you want in a career forester.

“He was a great person in the woods, an avid outdoorsman. He was calm, and even-tempered, and capable of talking to anybody. He was very capable of getting projects done and on the ground.”

Killinger spent 31 years working out of Sitka, beginning as a volunteer. He was eventually hired as a fisheries biologist, and would go on to serve in many capacities, including being detailed to Washington DC to work with the national watershed staff, acting ranger stints in the Chugach National Forest in Cordova and in Admiralty Island National Monument, and eventually becoming district ranger in Craig.

This is the resume of someone who could work anywhere in the country. Forrest Cole says Killinger remained in the Tongass by choice.

“He’d go fishing before work, and always tell us how many fish he’d caught first thing in the morning. He was an avid outdoorsman, and Alaska fit his style best.”

“Greg was a leader and mentor to so many people,” says Andrew Thoms, director of the Sitka Conservation Society.

“He was the connector and catalyst for so many things happening. He always gave credit to someone else: The staff he supervised and the partners he worked with. He never wanted to take credit for himself, he always wanted to give it to other people.

The nation’s forests are in transition from primarily old-growth logging of the last century to a more holistic form of management for this century. The Sitka and Craig Ranger Districts have been at the epicenter of this change in the Tongass, with several watershed restoration projects completed or underway. Killinger provided the energy that helped propel this major shift on the ground.

Thoms mourns Killinger’s loss, but says his spirit survives.

“Honestly, Greg’s irreplaceable. But at the same time the way he’s inspired the people that worked with him, people will take up what he started. People will continue doing what he initiated and got moving, because of the force of his personality, his vision, and his leadership.”

This kind of tribute — from a conservationist to a forester — would have been unheard of when Killinger began his career 31 years ago. Thoms says he and Killinger saw eye-to-eye from the very first time they met.

“There’s an ethic among conservationists that it’s your responsibility to leave the place better than you found it. And for me, Greg exemplified that more than anybody.”

And of course, any conversation about Greg Killinger eventually leads to his appetite for the outdoors.

“Greg was the kind of guy who’d go out on a fishing trip, and even if he didn’t catch fish, he’d be as happy at the end of the day as if he came home with his coolers filled.”

But often those coolers were filled, and — as Forrest Cole has said — Killinger loved to spread the joy, among colleagues who may not have been getting out as much as they would have liked. “To hear him talk about it at 8 in the morning got a little old sometimes!”

Cole says the Forest Service, even nationwide, is a relatively small family. News of Killinger’s premature death from natural causes has traveled far. “I’ve been getting 4 or 5 emails every half-hour,” Cole says, “from people around the country who ran across him.”

A dog explores part of the Tongass National Forest’s Treadwell Ditch Trail on Douglas Island, part of Juneau. (Ed Schoenfeld/CoastAlaska News)

The Forest Service is setting up an advisory board to help rewrite the Tongass National Forest’s management plan. It’s somewhat similar to another panel that shut down last year without completing its work.

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Tongass managers have a couple big jobs ahead of them.

They’re reviewing and updating the land-management plan for the 17-million-acre forest. They’re also working on a roadmap for a transition from old-growth to young-growth timber harvests.

So, the agency has decided to recruit 15 people for an advisory committee.

Tongass Supervisor Forrest Cole says they’ll take about a year developing proposals for the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and the chief of the Forest Service.

“What we’re really trying to do is find folks who have experience working in collaborative groups, knowledge regarding Southeast Alaska issues and willingness to work closely together (and) come up with a solution,” Cole says.

They’ll include representatives of the industry, state and federal agencies, environmental groups and tribal organizations.

That sounds a lot like the Tongass Futures Roundtable, a larger group with a somewhat similar mission. It began around seven years ago and shut down last spring after some timber and environmental groups quit.

Cole says it broke ground that should ease the way for the advisory panel.

“We had never had all of the interests in Southeast Alaska sit down in the same year together. So it was a fairly lengthy process, probably three of the six years it was around, it took to get people to physically be able to sit in a room, have a conversation and listen to diverse opinions,” Cole says.

“Collaboration is the watchword,” says former Juneau Mayor Bruce Botelho, who moderated the group and tried to keep it moving forward.

“Even though the roundtable did not perhaps achieve a lot of what it had initially set out to do, it created I think a climate of discussion between parties who needed to be talking to each other but historically did not,” he says.

Roundtable organizers hoped to develop a comprise to ongoing Tongass timber battles. But Cole says it did more than meet.

“There was a bridge timber proposal that was put together by Tongass Futures that got us out of a number of heavily-litigated projects and provided timber along the way to keep the current industry alive,” he says.

The Southeast Conference, a regional development organization, was part of the roundtable. But it joined the exodus of timber and state government representatives that led to its dissolution.

The conference last year proposed its own Tongass management plan. Leaders hope to advance that as part of the advisory group’s discussions.

“I’m excited about it. I guess I should say I’m ready for another round, because you just can’t stop trying,” says Shelly Wright, conference executive director.

She says the new panel has a better chance of succeeding.

“The roundtable really was not (an) official advisory group, so I think it may be a little bit different. The undersecretary has actually said this is for his information, so I think that’s going to give it a little more weight, so to speak,” she says.

Those interested in joining the Tongass Advisory Committee need to apply by February 27th. Details are here.

Cole says the Forest Service will chose members using its own standards.

“They’ll work among themselves to see if they can come up with a consensus-based recommendation that the Forest Service will take under advisement to further along the transition or the forest-plan modification,” he says.

But he doesn’t expect to make absolutely everybody involved in these issues happy.

“In fact there’s a number of federal advisory committees that have been established that never came to fruition. So there’s still a possibility that we can’t get a recommendation out of this group. And if not, we’ll proceed on.

He says the panel’s work will not delay the review of the land-management plan. That’s expected to be completed in 2016.