Hope for the timber industry: the timber industry has been hard hit due to a declining timber supply, but it can recover.

• Author: Graham, Owen

There is a very small but relatively stable timber manufacturing industry in both the Southcentral and Interior regions of Alaska whereas the industry in Southeast Alaska has been badly crippled by a decade of declining timber supply. The good news is that there is potential for the industry to grow in all three regions. All that is necessary is a reliable, affordable, long-term timber supply.

The Southeast region of Alaska was given such a supply in 1954 with the start of the 50-year timber sales. Prior to 1954, the annual timber harvest in Southeast Alaska was about 50 million board feet (mmbf), but the two 50-year sales had a combined operating level of over 350 mmbf per year. Benefiting from the steady supply of high-quality sawlogs that were being harvested, several sawmills were soon enlarged and additional sawmills were built. The federal government then responded to this increased sawmill demand by offering additional shorter-term timber sales. These sawmill timber sales were typically 30 mmbf to 70 mmbf each; large enough to sustain operations for several years so that the purchaser could amortize the cost of installing the facilities needed to house the logging employees and their families. Operating these logging camps and constructing the initial transportation system in remote locations also requires large investments in equipment and supplies. The camps, the expensive construction and logging equipment, and the mills, must all operate at or near capacity in order to be cost competitive and thus produce the profits needed to recoup the investments.

THE GOOD YEARS

In 1980, Congress reaffirmed a dependable supply of timber for the continuous operation of both the pulp mills and the sawmills with a mandate in ANILCA that promised a 450 mmbf annual timber supply, about 520 mmbf with utility logs. (About 15 percent of the timber in Southeast produces logs that are too defective to meet the merchantability requirements for sawlogs. These logs are given a utility scale rather than a Scribner sawlog scale.) After weathering a worldwide market depression in the early 1980s, the industry began to diversify its markets. The pulp mills were marketing their products in more than 30 countries and the sawmills began manufacturing finished lumber for both domestic and export markets.

LEAN TIMES

In 1990, Congress removed the mandate for a reliable timber supply. Immediately, the supply of timber under contract plummeted and after 10 years the...