Tyler Miller uses a trackhoe to move felled timber into the Shelikov River on Kruzof Island this summer, creating habitat for spawning fish. Habitat restoration like this has become a primary focus of the Sitka Ranger District, in partnership with organizations like the Sitka Conservation Society and the Nature Conservancy. “15 years ago,” says district ranger Perry Edwards,”the only talking SCS and the Forest Service would do would be to our lawyers.” (SCS video still)

Here’s your fact for the day: The Sitka Ranger District is 1.7-million acres. That’s about the size of most of the nation’s other 154 National Forests.

Perry Edwards has been district ranger in Sitka since June of 2014. He told the Chamber of Commerce this week (11-23-16) that — despite two timber operators in the district — fisheries remain the top economic driver in the forest, with 25-percent of the entire West Coast’s entire salmon harvest coming from the Tongass.

The Sitka Ranger District recently has specialized in salmon habitat restoration. Edwards said it makes economic sense.

Unlike the lower 48 where they can spend $1 million on a fisheries rehabilitation project and get 10 salmon to come back, the return on investment here is incredible. We can do projects that will bring back 100,000 or more pink salmon every year, from now into forever. And that is so important to me that we can be able to do that. And so when they say, Well you’re fish aren’t endangered, maybe we shouldn’t give you the money, maybe we should give it to these places on the Columbia? My response to that is look at the return on investment. Look at the commercial and economic aspects to Southeast, to Alaska, and to the nation as a whole. And maybe you’re a little short-sighted in how you’re looking at those things. Don’t wait until the last one, to get there.

Video: Restoration in Shelikov

Restoration in Shelikof from Sitka Conservation Society on Vimeo.

In addition to fisheries, recreation has become important to the forest economy. This year the district issued 43 permits for outfitters and guides. In a highly-publicized incident this summer, one of those tours ran into an aggressive brown bear sow on the Sitkoh Lake trail, and one of the guides was seriously injured.

Edwards said it was important to maintain a balance with visitor use.

We’re trying to weigh many things. We want to have people come to this place and see how incredible it is. At the same time we don’t want them to be encroaching on the locals who are doing our thing to subsistence hunt and subsistence fish. It’s a delicate balance, and everyone’s got an opinion about how we should be doing it. And my role, and the Forest Service’s role is to find out what the greatest good is. Oftentimes there are no wrong answers; it’s trying to find the most right answer, which is no easy feat.

The district’s new headquarters on Halibut Point Road accommodates 52 employees — down about 100 staff members from the logging heyday in the 1980s and 1990s. As demand for recreational access to the forest increases, Edwards said the district has had to cope with a loss of funding.

We’re struggling with that. The budget from Congress is down 42-percent. That’s huge! A lot of times people don’t recognize what they’re missing until it’s gone. They say, Well 42-percent and you’re still doing everything that needs to be done, then obviously the rest of that was just fat and you didn’t need that money. But if it really weren’t for the hard work of people who just can’t say no, and won’t let things go, it wouldn’t be that way. But we’re having to make some hard decisions about things as we go along that way. We’ve been looking at other ways to deal with things. We’ve been looking at ways of reducing costs, and being sustainable in the things we do keep — which is critical in this day and age.

Relief for some of the district’s funding pressure may come from Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who sits on the Senate Committee on Appropriations. Murkowski has inserted language into a recent appropriations bill to increase recreational spending in the nation’s forests. Edwards told the Sitka chamber that he’s prohibited from actively lobbying for the bill, but audience members were not.

He admitted that the Sitka district could make a better case for itself.

We have not done as good a job as I think we should have — and I’m working on it now — to try and articulate what does that mean? It’s easy to say timber jobs. There are this many timber jobs. That means this much money to the mill, that means this. When you start getting into: What is the value of scenery? What is the value of wilderness? What is the value of those outfitter/guide permits? It gets a little more difficult to figure that out. But those people come here, they spend money here, they come back here again. So I think it’s really critical to look at those other things. And somehow Congress needs to understand what they’re risking by reducing our funding so much.

Perry Edwards is the Sitka District Ranger. During his remarks to the chamber, he celebrated the economic contributions and volunteerism of the 52 staff members of the district — including his own: Edwards is the current president of the board of the Raven Radio Foundation.

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