Forestry and healthy business and community: there is good news and bad in the timber industry.

• Author: Colby, Nicole A. Bonham

Weathering another year of political controversy, biological warfare and economic un certainty, Alaska's timber industry has no time for respite.

In hot spots around the state, there is good news and bad.

In Ketchikan, the Alaska Marine Highway System has taken up residence in a portion of the former Ketchikan Pulp Mill site, delighting local politicians and economy watchers. Though, while beneficial to the local community, the move still does not translate into the forest-related reuse of the pulp mill site that many forestry proponents wanted. Ketchikan has attempted to lure timber-related manufacturers and producers to town in fits and starts, but with little concrete movement so far.

With moisture down and temperatures up, forest trees have felt the brunt of a continuing battle with insects, such as the bark beetle. In terms of general forest health, Robert Wheeler, forestry specialist with the Cooperative Extension Service, writes in a recent service newsletter that trees feel the attack from a variety, of sources.

"The past 30 years of increasing temperatures and reduced moisture avail ability have contributed substantially to massive mortality of timber by insects, such as the spruce bark beetle. Other indications of stress and reduced forest resistance are found with the increasing impacts of leaf miners and borers as witnesses with the hardwood species in the boreal forest," according to Wheeler.

Even Southeast, despite its steady rain, isn't out of danger. Where nature gives way, mankind's political wranglings assume position. "Although the forests of Southeast Alaska have been less impacted by moisture and temperature fluctuations," Wheeler says, "it has been embroiled in the continuing controversy over the Roadless Rule developed under the Clinton administration, which has served to further inhibit the availability of needed timber from the Tongass National Forest to support the forest products industry and forestry job-dependent communities in Southeast Alaska."

Still, movement is constantly afoot between industry and forest managers to tilt the scale toward an acceptable balance in sustained forest health and production. The titles of recent forestry-related conferences held in Alaska in recent years tell the story of the forestry industry's fight for survival.

During an autumn conference last year in Anchorage, business and a concerned public came together with forest managers. The conference, aptly called "Linking Healthy...