Adding Value to Alaska Timber.

• Author: SWAGEL, WILL

The Sitka Wood Utilization Center was created to develop a market for Alaska's wood products.

In Haines, a small-scale manufacturer fashions hot tubs from Alaska yellow cedar. In Port Alexander, a Baranof Island fishing community of fewer than 200 people, an entrepreneur is making high-backed wooden deck chairs. In Dyea, near Skagway, a new roadway bridge is entirely composed of Alaska timber. In Sitka, a demonstration of a portable wood kiln draws curious wood products manufacturers from throughout the state.

Examples of the value-added processing of wood products like these are now being nurtured by a new USDA Forest Service facility-the Wood Utilization Center.

Organizing an Approach

The Alaska timber industry has faced reduced harvests for nearly a decade and a wide range of voices have called for more value-added processing and less whole log export as a way of maximizing the number of jobs and economic benefits to timber-dependent communities. Since last year, the industry has been receiving new help from WUC, now fully staffed and running in the Forest Service Tongass area headquarters in Sitka.

The Wood Utilization Center is essentially a branch office of the Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station, one of a network of USDA research facilities that also interacts with other scientific agencies in government and academia throughout the U.S. The Sitka office was established in early 1999 after Alaska Senators Ted Stevens and Frank Murkowski secured $1.13 million in federal funds for the project.

Since then, WUC has been analyzing the reams of data and stacks of studies previously compiled, says Ted Laufenberg, who ran the center for the first year before returning in December to his home-base, the world-famous Forest Service products lab in Madison, Wis. His job was also to hire a permanent WUC staff.

Laufenberg hired Forest Products Specialist Ken Kilborn, who assumed leadership of the five-person WUC team upon Laufenberg's departure. Kilborn is a walking example of WUC's deep networking resource, with 35 years of experience as both a Forest Service employee and a private consultant, with a stint at Colorado State University. He has worked on timber issues from Arctic Village to Metlakatla. The WUC team also includes a forest products technologist and an economist.

Since opening its doors, the center has co-sponsored two conferences on value-added forest products and plans to hold at least two more conferences this...