Soaring lumber prices could be a boon for Southeast Alaska’s struggling timber industry. The pandemic has fueled the demand for both renovations and the new home construction market, and supply has not kept up.

But industry experts are divided over how to best seize the opportunity in the region: By cutting what’s left of Tongass old growth, or by retooling to cut younger, second-growth trees.

In March, the National Association of Home Builders blamed rising materials prices for adding an average $24,000 to the cost of a new home.

Most of that cost is due to the skyrocketing price of lumber which is in high demand and “soaring to just absolutely record highs,” says resource economist Brett Watson with the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

There are a number of explanations: low interest rates have spurred home-buying, people doing more D-I-Y and renovations, and also a bottleneck in the supply caused by the pandemic .

But could this be an opportunity for Southeast’s struggling timber sector?

“What I imagine that timber mills are looking at now during this recent run up is thinking about whether or not these prices are here to stay,” Watson added.

Opponents of old-growth logging push second-growth solutions

Catherine Mater is an Oregon-based forestry consultant who’s worked both for timber outfits and for environmental groups opposed to old growth logging. She’s been advocating for retooling Southeast’s timber economy to use second growth trees instead of logging old growth forests.

“What we have in Southeast Alaska is literally a wall of wood that’s going to happen whether the industry is ready for it or not,” she told CoastAlaska during a visit to Juneau in September 2019.

“And the real question is, can we do a good transition so that you’ve got an industry that could reinvent itself?”

Two years later, Mater says she still believes the focus on old growth logging is a fight that no one can win. 

“Alaska really is the last state in the nation that harvests old growth material — no one else is doing it,” she said in a recent telephone interview from Corvallis. “Everyone has transitioned to young growth harvesting. And the industry is not just surviving, but it’s thriving right now.”

She predicts litigation and public pressure will continue to hold up attempts to clear cut 500-year-old trees on public lands.

The industry says Tongass second-growth is decades from viability

But Alaska’s timber industry remains focused on old growth supply. That’s despite the Tongass National Forest’s 2016 plan to transition away from logging ancient forests.

The Forest Service prepped one of the largest timber sales in recent history on Prince of Wales Island. But environmentalists sued in 2019 — after objecting to clear-cutting old growth forests — and a federal judge agreed that the agency’s review process was flawed.

It sent the Forest Service back to the drawing board to revive a portion of the old growth logging plan. But in the meantime, it’s taken tens of thousands of acres of forest off the table — including second-growth lumber — and that means there’s little supply available on federal lands, says those who work in the industry. 

“There are no young growth sales scheduled in the Forest Service,” Eric Nichols of Alcan Lumber in Ketchikan told CoastAlaska. “So people can talk about all this stuff. But until you see these timber sales actually come up, you can’t count on them.”

He’s skeptical that second-growth trees are the answer. His company exports old growth logs to Asia where he says there’s a strong market for their clear, knot-free timber. And he says it’s more economical to export overseas than transporting logs to mills in Alaska or down south.

“By the time we build the roads and harvest the timber, truck them from a small island, put them in the water and transport them to a mill in Washington,” Nichols said, “our cost to do that is higher than what we can generate from the log.”

Others who make their living in this industry agree: Second-growth timber sales don’t pencil out. Especially as the costs of doing business rise. 

Wes Tyler operates Icy Straits Lumber and Milling on Chichagof Island, west of Juneau. Most of his work is old growth logs he agrees are prized for their clear, knot-free wood.

He doesn’t dismiss the potential for second-growth harvest but he says that is further south and out of range of his small mill near Hoonah.

The region’s industry now employs just a few hundred people at most, compared to the thousands when Alaska Pulp Corporation in Sitka and the Ketchikan Pulp Company operated their mills.

“It’s going to be difficult because the whole system of things — the whole infrastructure that used to be there in the old days — is gone,” Tyler said.

The last major sawmill in the region is Viking Lumber in Klawock. The company didn’t respond to calls for comment about the potential for second-growth trees. Nor did the Alaska Forest Association returns calls or emails.

Tyler says that it would take major investment to get Southeast’s timber manufacturing sector running again.

“And so, somebody is going to have to spend a lot of money to set up for a volume-type infrastructure that’ll handle that,” he added.

The timber business is a long game. Tyler says in the northern reaches of the Tongass National Forest there could one day be potential for second-growth harvests in future decades.

“Most likely it would be another 30 to 40 years of growth before it is actually viable,” he added in a follow up email.

Political winds shift the direction of Tongass management

Politics play a role as much as economics, leaving Eric Nichols of Alcan Timber deeply skeptical of his industry’s future. Chinese tariffs on timber exports imposed during the Trump administration’s trade war hurt the industry. Clinton-era Roadless policies were supported under Obama, but rolled back by Trump.

“Every four years, we keep changing the direction of the Tongass is going we’re going through that right now again,” Nichols said, “and you cannot make the investments needed either on the harvesting side, or on the manufacturing side, based upon an unsteady supply from the Forest Service.”

The political transition means the feds aren’t ready to show their cards of how management might change.

“We are evaluating the implications of the new administration changes and will provide updates as they become available,” Tongass spokesman Paul Robbins Jr. wrote in an emailed statement.

On top of it all,  Sealaska, the regional Alaska Native corporation, and largest private landowner, exited the timber business — destabilizing the sector even further.

Yet Catherine Mater, the forestry consultant, says the pieces to revitalize the industry are in place — and have been for a long time. Working from the Forest Service’s own data and as well as her firm’s in-field surveys, she’s prepared a report that shows tens of millions of board feet of marketable stands of trees that are at least 60 years old.

“Had Southeast been on track to transition to young growth starting this year, you would have had competitive material flowing in not only to Alaska markets, but in my opinion in the Lower 48 markets,” she said. “The pricing has been so good.”

Of course nobody can know for sure whether these higher prices are here to say. But both Mater and Nichols do agree on one point: second-growth timber isn’t being offered on the Tongass. That is hasn’t been the focus of the Forest Service.

The current timber sales in the works are about 1,850 acres of old growth forest being prepped for sale on the north end of Prince of Wales Island. And a second project east of Ketchikan could offer about 6,040 acres of national forest for logging.

Of that only about 1,000 acres of that timber sale would be second-growth forest as the emphasis continues to feed the demand for centuries old trees, something conservationists have already raised their objections to.

Sealaska Corporation is getting out of the logging business after more than 40 years. Southeast Alaska’s regional Native corporation made the announcement on Monday.

The move by one of the region’s economic powerhouses is the latest sign of Southeast Alaska’s economic transition away from logging.

“Logging created value for our Alaska Native shareholders for decades, and it brought us to where we are today. We’re grateful for the commitment and professionalism that led to our success,” Sealaska CEO Anthony Mallott said in a statement. “But we’ve now built an organization that can thrive well into the future, and that means engaging in activities with more enduring benefits for our communities.”

The corporation declined further comment.

The news was welcomed by environmentalists opposed to logging old growth forests.

“We are overjoyed for Sealaska at this incredible decision making by Anthony Mallott and by their board chair Joe Nelson,” Meredith Trainor, executive director of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, told CoastAlaska on Monday. “And just this visionary leadership of moving Sealaska, away from logging and towards other ways of creating benefit for their people.”

The Juneau-based Native corporation says the transition isn’t expected to affect future profits or dividends. A joint statement says the decision is part of a long-term plan to generate “sustainable value” for shareholders. 

Until now, Sealaska was a major player in the region’s timber economy with more than 360,000 acres in its portfolio. 

In 2015, it began logging lands it received through a transfer by Congress of more than 70,000 acres of Tongass National Forest, largely around Prince of Wales Island. 

The Alaska Forest Association – the state’s timber industry group – declined to comment.

The Native corporation was created by the landmark Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. It has about 22,000 shareholders, most of whom live in or have historic ties to Southeast Alaska.

Note: Opinions expressed in commentary on KCAW are those of the author, and are not necessarily shared by the station’s board, staff, or volunteers.

“Never touch the principle.” This is often said about finances, but the same logic applies to our own backyard here in Southeast Alaska. We still have the opportunity to create a sustainable economy, one that includes a logging industry. This future is only possible if we maintain our principle—the intact, productive habitat of the Tongass National Forest. And currently, our principle is under attack.

My name is Zach LaPerriere. I am a woodworker and small scale logger in Sitka. Sitka has been home since 2000, but I grew up in Ketchikan during the heyday of large-scale clearcut logging. Over two decades have passed since the pulp mills have closed down and those jobs are gone, but the state is still playing these same corporate welfare games with the timber industry. Last month, the U.S. Forest Service announced that it chose a full exemption as the preferred alternative for the Alaska Roadless Rule, despite the massive showing of public support for keeping the Rule on the Tongass.

A full exemption from the Roadless Rule isn’t just a mistake because of how it would harm our existing visitor and commercial fishing industries; it’s also, frankly, bad economics. A week before the draft environmental impact statement dropped, Taxpayers for Common Sense released a study showing that Tongass timber sales have cost taxpayers nearly 600 million dollars over the last 20 years. They also found that repealing the Roadless Rule from the Tongass would only increase this trend of wasting taxpayers dollars. Why are our political leaders so insistent on subsidizing this outdated economic model?

We have been coming together to say: we hunt here. We fish here. We recreate in these woods. Many of us, myself included, make our living from them. Many of these forest-supported livelihoods are sustainable; fishing, hunting and guiding, wildlife tours, or in my case: one-of -a kind hand-turned bowls from dead & down trees. I am not against a homegrown logging industry in Southeast Alaska – in fact, I am a part of it. However, that logging industry needs to be aligned to the timescale of this slow-growing forest. 

I want to see local guitar makers using Sitka Spruce; local carpenters crafting furniture from beautiful red cedar; I would love for builders to be able to walk into Spenards and buy local wood for their projects. We need to do value-added processing in-region, instead of shipping our trees to Asia for the commodity market or Washington for suburban fence pickets. 

We need to honor these trees and let the woodwork tell their stories. Trying to revive an era of industrial-scale clearcutting doesn’t do justice to our forests, it doesn’t do justice to future generations, and it doesn’t do justice to the local, small-scale timber operators and woodworkers who are dedicated to sustaining our livelihoods and our natural environment for years to come. These sustainable economies and futures won’t be handed to us—we have to create them. That is why I am going to the Forest Service’s Alaska Roadless Rule public meeting on Tuesday, November 12th at 5pm in Centennial Hall—to speak for a truly sustainable future for our forests.

The public comment period is open for the US Forest Service’s proposal to exempt Alaska from the Roadless Rule. One community where that plan is likely to meet a cool reception is Tenakee Springs, where the Forest Service is holding a public meeting Tuesday, November 5th, 10am – 11:30am in the Community Center. Megan Moody, who runs Tenakee’s Independent Learning Center, spoke with KCAW about the town’s resistance to amending the Roadless Rule.

More than 50 people turned out Tuesday night for a town hall meeting on the Roadless Rule organized by the Sitka Conservation Society. 

The Trump Administration has proposed exempting Alaska from the 2001 rule designed to protect large swaths of public land from further development and resource extraction. 

Critics of the proposal believe that a full exemption would lead to increased old-growth logging on the Tongass National Forest. 

The town hall was designed to bring people up to speed on the current debate over the rule, answer questions about Forest Service land management practices, and demonstrate how to craft an effective public comment. 

Everyone who spoke at the event was in favor of preserving the Roadless Rule in some form or another. Zach LaPerriere, a woodworker and small-scale logger, said he doesn’t support the current timber industry model of shipping unprocessed trees abroad.

“Having an interest in the timber industry, I’d like one to be here in 50 years or in 100 years,” LaPerriere said. “And exporting round logs to Asia is not a sustainable endeavor. It’s 1950s thinking.” 

Others brought up concerns about the potential impact on salmon fisheries, if spawning streams are degraded due to more logging. Marsh Skeele, a fisherman-owner of Sitka Salmon Shares, says he sees economic reasons for keeping the Roadless Rule. 

“To me, having the Roadless Rule in place keeps my business viable,” Skeele said. “It keeps me here economically. It keeps healthy salmon populations.” 

The Forest Service will hold a number of public meetings and subsistence hearings on the proposed exemption in the coming weeks: they will be in Yakutat and Tenakee Springs on November 5th, Kake on November 8th, and Angoon and Sitka on November 12th. 

The public comment period is open now through December 17th. 

Tyler and Ariel Miller, brother and sister, take a break from their hard work building structures for coho salmon in the Shelikof River. Photo by Katherine Rose, KCAW.

Heavy equipment is rumbling across Kruzof Island near Sitka again, but this time the big rigs are not removing trees — instead, they’re putting them back. The Forest Service is restoring salmon habitat on the Shelikov River that was damaged by logging nearly 50 years ago.  KCAW’s Katherine Rose recently visited the project to learn why it takes so much noise to fix a forest.

Downloadable audio.

You’re on a winding road overgrown with alders. You see a sign that says “Shelikof River Restoration Project ahead.” You might expect to hear something like this…

Sounds of the river, peaceful ambient noise

But for the next few weeks, if you wander deep in the forest on Kruzof Island, you may hear something like this instead…

Sounds of machinery and trees being crushed

That’s Todd Miller knocking over alders with his excavator.  When you hear the trees snap and fall, you might immediately think “destruction.” Because that’s what it sounds like. Not restoration.

“When this was logged back in the day it was not regulated as much. There was a lot of logging where they actually used the rivers as roads. They’d just get in ’em with their dozers, and it was an easy way to move wood,” said Todd. 

Todd owns TM Construction, which typically does commercial tree thinning. But today he’s working with the Forest Service and the Nature Conservancy on a watershed restoration project to rebuild the coho salmon habitat.

“He’s gonna jump over there and start building that trail in there, and we’re gonna build a structure for the fish.”

Todd’s son, Tyler, is the foreman, and he runs the skidder, or the “Big Twig Rig” as he calls it.

“I think just because it makes big trees look like twigs, basically. It’s got probably about fifty-inch tires with massive chains on it. It’s basically like a big monster truck,” said Tyler. 

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With the Big Twig Rig, Tyler grabs the trees, bringing them to his dad. Then Todd uses the excavator to strategically place them in the river, using the alders and larger trees to both redirect the path of the river and build a sort-of dam. And then there’s Todd’s daughter, Ariel. She’s only 14, but she has an important job too.

“I put boom in the water which is a round absorbent pad that, if they break a HydroHose or leak oil, the boom will collect it,” said Ariel. 

And Todd says those aren’t the only spills that happen on the job.

“First day we were working in the river with Marty. A log fell out of the bucket and I dropped it or whatever, and splashed the inspector,” said Todd. 

“He stayed well away after that. He didn’t have time to duck or anything, he just took it all. I was laughing so hard, dad was like, Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry, so sorry, I didn’t mean for that to happen,” added Ariel. 

When these woods were logged in the 1960’s, trees were cut down all the way to river’s edge. Even the trees in the river were removed, leaving virtually no pools for coho salmon to rest and breed. Norman Cohen is interim director of conservation for the Nature Conservancy in Juneau. They help the Forest Service fund watershed restoration projects like this one.

“While the trees are growing back to, we want to try to make sure those habitat conditions are in place so that over the long-term the stream is resilient, the habitat is working, and the fish come back,” said Cohen. 

In a few weeks, phase one of the project will be complete, and the group will move on to phase two, when logs will be lowered into the river by helicopters.

Sounds of machinery fade in

A large piece of a log floats by, and and the Millers’ black lab, Trigger, bounds into the river, luckily catching it between his teeth. He drops it on the shoreline, and starts to dig in the sand.

Sound of dog digging in sand, whimpering, splashes of the logs

Trigger is already reaping rewards from the new watershed, and the team hopes the coho salmon fry will too. The Miller family, the Forest Service and the Nature Conservancy will be finished with this project soon. And instead of hearing this…

Sound of the machinery

Visitors to Kruzof Island will  hear this…

Sound of flowing water

At 17 million acres, the Tongass National Forest, pictured here near Sitka, is the country’s largest. (Photo by Mike Hicks)

What is the future of the Tongass National Forest? Will there be a timber industry, and what will it look like in five, ten, fifty years?

Those are the daunting questions before the Tongass Advisory Committee, which is meeting for the fifth time in Juneau this week (wk of 1-20-15). The committee is tasked with hammering out how the Forest Service should handle the Obama Administration’s “transition” away from old-growth logging and to a new focus on younger trees.

But for some people both on and off the committee, the most important questions are the ones the committee isn’t supposed to address.

Downloadable audio

If you want to know how it feels to be on the Tongass Advisory Committee (TAC), the key word seems to be: risky.

“This is kind of the moderate group, and that was by design,” said committee member Wade Zammit, former president of the Sealaska Timber Corporation, speaking at the last meeting, in Sitka. “But there is tremendous pressure [on] every single person sitting at this table from influences in their constituency, about the direction they need to take this. And that — that’s risk. I mean, they are out on the limb on some of the things we’re about to tackle.”

Those things include how soon the Forest Service should taper off old growth timber sales, and how quickly it can ramp up sales of younger, second growth trees.

The Tongass committee is made up of over a dozen representatives from timber and conservation groups, local communities and Native organizations. And they are haunted, in part, by the history of past stakeholder groups who couldn’t hammer out a “made in the Tongass” solution.

But, said Zammit, “I think this group is different. I really feel strongly about this group and what it can accomplish.”

It’ll soon be clear whether that’s true. The committee has to come up with recommendations for the upcoming amendment to the Tongass Forest Plan by late February — though they’ve asked for more time.

That Forest Plan is a sort of zoning map for the entire Tongass — essentially, what can happen where.

And for now, everyone agrees on one thing: the current situation is untenable.

“We can’t go on like what’s been going on,” said committee member Eric Nichols of Ketchikan, owner of Alcan Forest Pro  ducts and Evergreen Timber. “The industry is devastated, a lot of these communities are devastated. Something has to change. ”

For the timber industry, lawsuits have made it impossible to get a sale out on any reliable timeline. For conservationists, there’s still too much old growth slated for logging. And for communities across Southeast, the long, slow decline of the timber industry has left a major economic hole.

Robert Bonnie, U.S. Department of Agriculture Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment, attended the last committee meeting in Sitka.

“I think everybody recognizes that we can’t just flip a switch and immediately begin to bring second growth online,” Bonnie said. “That’s because there’s not a whole lot of second growth out there, and because there’s some constraints on the Forest Service’s ability to do that…What we’d like to do is, over time, decrease the amount of old growth timber and increase the amount of second growth, and that’s the opportunity here. Now, the faster we do that from the standpoint of the conflicts we’ve seen, the better. But we also have to give the industry time to adapt.”

But for many of those watching the process, the biggest questions on the Tongass are outside the committee’s timber-only assignment.

Fishing and recreation groups, in particular, want more attention from the Forest Service. During public comments at the TAC’s last meeting, people said over and over again that the Forest Service — and the committee — need to move beyond a single-minded focus on timber.

Malena Marvin is the executive director of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council.

“We want to see the Forest Service redirect its budget to prioritize the industries that most Southeast Alaskans depend on,” Marvin said. “That’s everything related to salmon: commercial fishing, sport fishing, subsistence, personal use. And  visitor industries, tourism. Those are our economic power-houses, and so many people really feel that those should be the focus of Tongass management.”

A recent report from Rain Coast Data found that in 2013, the timber industry directly employed 325 people in Southeast Alaska. Together, the seafood and tourism industries employed nearly 11,000 people.

So, commenters asked, why is there a special committee to address timber industry needs, and not for fishing, or recreation?

Joel Hanson is the conservation director for The Boat Company, which runs small cruise ships in Southeast.

“I just wanted to let you know that we at the Boat Company feel both irrelevant to the process and threatened by it, and that’s not a good place for us to be,” Hanson told the committee. “So for those of you hoping the TAC would bring about some changes which might actually reduce the amount of controversy over timber sales on the Tongass, and result in fewer lawsuits: I suggest that you either don’t get your hopes up, or try like hell to find a way to reduce the threat that this transition process poses to recreational  interests.”

“I think we understand that criticism,” Bonnie said.  “Clearly, recreation, salmon are vitally important to the economy here.”

But, he said, the Tongass committee’s charter is deliberately narrow. “I think it’s also important to recognize that we need to move to a place around forest management where there’s more of a shared vision.”

In other words, he said, timber is the most controversial piece of the Tongass puzzle, and the Forest Service worries that giving the committee too much to do might undermine its ability to get anything done at all.

In its meetings so far, the committee has found common ground: there is agreement that the timber industry needs a steady supply of young growth into the future, and that even after the transition, some old growth should be available for niche industries.

But the big, thorny issue before the committee remains how quickly to scale back industrial old growth logging, and how much will get cut in the meantime. And those questions  may be more than enough for one committee to handle.

The Tongass Advisory Committee is meeting through Friday (1-23-15) in Juneau. You can find the meeting agenda here, and instructions on how to submit public comment here.

A logged area of Admiralty Island sandwiched between stands of old-growth forest regrows. Logging, second-growth timber and environmental protection were among the issues the Tongass Futures Roundtable tried to address.

The Tongass Futures Roundtable is shutting down. The organization tried to resolve Southeast Alaska forest-issue conflicts.

It formed about seven years ago.

Organizers hoped to bring together all parties involved in the forest to craft compromises on land-use issues, such as logging and habitat protection.

“The roundtable brought people together who had never had to sit across from each other at a table. The normal environment was a courtroom,” says Bruce Botelho, the group’s facilitator and moderator.

The former attorney general and Juneau mayor says roundtable members decided to end their work during a meeting earlier this month.

“One of the benefits for us to dissolve right now is to create the opportunity for people to come together and perhaps learn from our experience, but also build on it. And one would hope that any assembly of stakeholders would truly bring back the whole range of participants,” he says.

A map of the Tongass National Forest. Image courtesy USFS.

Membership originally included industry, government, tribal and environmental leaders. But about two years ago, the state, timber representatives, four towns and some conservation groups pulled out.

“We didn’t have enough movement in the direction we felt needed to occur,” says State Forester Chris Maisch, one of the original roundtable members.

“So the governor decided it would be best to put state energy and time and resources into a task force, which he established through an administration order,” he says.

Maisch chaired that task force, which released its final report a few months ago.

It recommended a number of actions meant to increase logging. One was expanding state forests. Another was revising state rules to help small timber operators.

Yet another called for the federal government to turn two million acres of the Tongass over to the state to be managed for harvest.

Maisch says the timber task force has since shut down.

Botelho says the roundtable eventually decided it couldn’t fully do its work without the groups that left. It will cease operations July 1st. But he says it achieved some of its goals.

“We devoted a great deal of time to examining the proposed mental health land exchange between the state and the trust and ended up endorsing a process, which is underway. And I think that, absent the support of the roundtable, would have been more difficult,” Botelho says.

He says some of the roundtable’s working groups will also continue meeting. One focuses on Alaska Native issues, another on sustainable forests.

The Tongass Futures Roundtable had about 35 members and tried to reach decisions by consensus. State Forester Maisch says that just didn’t work.

“It was a well-intentioned effort. And a lot of people spent a lot of time in trying to make that process work. And unfortunately, it just wasn’t the right time and the right place. So it’s too bad that it didn’t come to a better conclusion,” he says.

The roundtable had funding support from the Rasmuson Foundation and other donors. The Juneau office of the Nature Conservancy, an international conservation organization, staffed the group.

Roundtable Coordinator Norm Cohen says money was not the reason the group decided to dissolve.

The village of Kake is on Keku Strait, 38 miles northwest of Petersburg and 95 miles southwest of Juneau. A local contractor starts soon on a Forest Service project tailored for local businesses. Photo by Melati Kaye.

Luther Coby lives in Kake, a village of about 600 on the northwest coast of Southeast’s Kupreanof Island.

His business, CSC Tree Service, was recently awarded a contract for some small Forest Service projects about 15 miles from town.

But he has to wait.

“The moose season started and there’s going to be a lot of people driving back and forth. So I’m just waiting for the big bang starting out, everybody’s all excited about hunting, and give them a few days to calm down and there won’t be as many people out there,” Coby says.

What’s called the Little John Stewardship Project will replace or repair some deteriorating culverts and bridges.

Coby says he and two other residents will work on the project.

“They money I make on this job goes back into the community, like the gas, the wages, equipment rentals. … These small villages, they really need stuff like that,” Coby says.

The contract was originally larger and included tree-thinning and other timber work. But the Forest Service scaled it back, making it easier for local businesses to compete. The logging component could become part of a separate contract.

The changes came after meetings with local businesses, conservation groups and others. Tom Parker is an agency resource planning supervisor.

“The Petersburg Ranger District

Kake’s main employers are the city, the school district and Kake Tribal Corporation. Unemployment is high, as are fuel prices.

is working heavily on collaboration with local communities and it’s an emphasis that I see coming from the Forest [Service] itself as well as from our district ranger, who brings over a lot of experience from the Thorne Bay Ranger District and a lot of collaborative efforts over there,” Parker says.

The Forest Service also purchased and shipped in supplies and materials because Kake businesses could not afford to buy them up front. That practice also saved some money.

The work will help improve salmon streams in the area. Old and damaged culverts can act as barriers for fish returning to spawn.

The Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, a coalition of environmental groups, was among those collaborating on the project. Community Organizer Daven Hafey says it was a success.

“The Little John Stewardship Project intended to package work on Kupreanof Island in a way that actually benefitted the ecological health of Kupreanof Island as well as the economic health of Kake,” Hafey says.

Coby, of CSC Tree Service, says he’s been awarded two other small Forest Service contracts. And he’d like to see more on the table. He says one could turn trees that mills don’t want into a marketable product.

“There’s a lot of timber out here in the Kake area, a lot of stuff not merchantable as lumber. But you can have a firewood processor right on site and you can be cutting up firewood and then bring it in on big trailers and dump it and let it sit for a couple years and let it season under a roof and … sell it as packaged firewood,” he says.

SEACC’s Hafey says the group is involved in similar efforts in the Wrangell and Hoonah areas. It’s among conservation groups working with the Forest Service on its transition from large-scale logging to restoration.

“All those are multi-intentioned. They’re all geared toward improving subsistence use, ecological health of watersheds and putting locals to work rather than bringing folks in from outside and employing them for a few months and then sending them back home,” Hafey says.

Many in the timber industry say the transition is bad for the region.

Critics point out that a small contract’s value – $26,000 in this case – is just a fraction of what one logger could make in a year.

Read and hear an earlier report on the transition to restoration in the Tongass.

Tenakee Springs | The era of large-scale logging might be gone from northern Southeast Alaska, but across the region, people are turning to smaller timber sales to earn a living. Officials hope the model can support local economies in the region. And for one family in Tenakee Springs, the effort has paid off.

Gordon Chew pilots his boat, the Cool Cat, to the Tenakee Springs fuel dock on Monday, Oct. 24. Chew runs Tenakee Logging Company. (Photo: Ed Ronco)

Gordon Chew runs a small logging operation in Corner Bay, just across the inlet from Tenakee Springs. And it keeps him busy. So busy, in fact that he says he doesn’t have time to stop for an interview, but that I can borrow his adult son’s bike and talk to him as we ride down to the harbor. In the interest of my own safety, I wait until we get to his boat before I reach for a microphone.

“We have to do a little bit of everything, between all the boating and barging and lumber milling and logging and construction and restoration around town,” he says.

Chew runs the Tenakee Logging Company, and he’s part of the changing face of the lumber industry. In this part of Southeast Alaska, large-scale logging doesn’t exist anymore. But smaller, selective cuts – like the 100,000 or so board feet each year that Chew takes from the Tongass – are becoming more popular.

Chew’s company logs, but it also builds. He uses the timber taken from Corner Bay on projects in Tenakee Springs. As we leave the harbor, he opens up the throttle and we head to the fuel dock. There’s a 55 gallon drum in the back of the boat.

The fuel will go over to Corner Bay to feed the company’s truck. But not far from where we’re tied up is the Snyder Mercantile – a general store dating back to 1899. Chew and his team are working to restore the old building, along with its adjacent property, using wood they’ve harvested and milled. Chew says that part of the business is essential.

“The foundation under that warehouse are all hemlock pilings,” he says. “We drag a lot of them over here as pilings. Also, the underpart of the store is all repaired with cedar pilings. I’m not sure if we could manage it on our timber sales alone. The fact we get to work with the timber as builders is what makes it lucrative for us. It’s not selling the timber.”

Zia Brucaya, of the Sitka Conservation Society, says Chew’s operation “is definitely unique in our ranger district,” but not to the region.

“Throughout Southeast Alaska there are lots of small mills that are operating to different degrees,” she said. “Some of them are doing construction as well as milling, like Gordon is. Some of them are just doing milling, putting together cabin kits and things. They’re all working at that smaller scale of a few hundred thousand board feet per year.”

SCS and other environmental groups in Southeast have taken an interest in operations like Chew’s because they say they’re smart, sustainable ways to use the Tongass. It was never logging outright that was the problem, she says. It was the scale of what happened in years past.

“We’re now working at a scale that is appropriate for the community, and it’s needed in the community,” she said.

Brucaya says it’s also an opportunity to build up the local economy for the benefit of local residents – a way to keep people living in Southeast, especially in small, remote communities, where the loss of even a family or two can be felt throughout town.

And few are more aware of that than Chris Budke, a forestry technician in the U.S. Forest Service’s Hoonah office.

“It seems like every time I turn around I read something in the paper or I see a reason or I look at people and I see lots of reasons for people to be leaving Southeast Alaska,” he said.

He lists off reasons: it’s a harsh environment, goods and services are expensive, and more. But he says offering opportunities to run small businesses using Tongass resources might help keep people around.

“If we can work with local people that are using local products and meet the objective of everybody – which is really difficult, by the way – and provide a product for those people they can turn around and make a living off of, that, to me, gives you reasons to be here,” Budke said.

And giving people reasons to be here can have big implications for Southeast, which is hemorrhaging population.

“This is incredibly important for people to be working. It’s incredibly important for us to be using our natural resources. It’s incredibly important for people to understand that we can use it responsibly. So we can meet the objectives of a lot of things here and give people a reason to stay in Southeast.”

Gordon Chew and his family are examples of that. They saw Alaska during a trip in 1995, and loved it so much that they went back south and made plans to move up. They returned in 1999 and have been here since. Back in Tenakee Springs, Chew’s 55 gallon drum is nearly full of No. 2 diesel.

As the nozzle is hoisted back onto the fuel dock, Chew says there’s a future in the kind of small-scale logging he does, not only for places like Tenakee Springs, but for the entire region.