Winds of change blow through southeast forests.

• Author: Swagel, Will
• Position: Tongass National Forest in Alaska

Timber experts struggle to reach consensus on use of the Tongass National Forest.

There's new talk in the forests of southeast Alaska. End clearcutting and downsize the industry. Harvest the forest on a biologically and economically sustainable basis. Make up for lost profits and jobs with value-added forest products.

These ideas are now being explored in the 16.9-million-acre Tongass National Forest. Figures vary, but the Alaska Forest Association says the Southeast wood-products industry still employs about 4,000 people from Yakutat south to the British Columbia border, more than 25 percent of the region's total work force and a whopping 35 percent of the total payroll.

But what kind of timber industry can attract investment? And what kind of timber industry will draw support from other industries using the forest?

To move forward into the 21st Century, the Southeast timber industry needs to develop a public consensus on its harvest, says Robert Loescher, Sealaska Corp.'s executive vice president for natural resources. Juneau-based Sealaska is the largest private landholder in Southeast Alaska, much of it timber lands the company has been harvesting for more than a decade.

Everyone agrees that adding value to the wood products harvested from both public and private lands in Southeast would be good for the regional economy. And most agree that a balanced use of the forest by conflicting groups is the fairest way to go.

But there is the inevitable sticking point that comes up. To paraphrase the Clinton campaign: It's the timber supply, stupid.

"All the players want to sit around and talk about how to slice up the pie," says natural resources professor Ronn Dick of Sheldon Jackson College in Sitka. "What they don't want to talk about is how big the pie is."

IT'S THE TIMBER SUPPLY, STUPID

The closure of the Alaska Pulp Corp. (APC) mill in Sitka, and subsequent cancellation of its 50-year timber contract, put the first chink in the virtual monopoly APC and Ketchikan Pulp Co. (KPC) have had over Tongass timber since the late 1950s. KPC's contract ends in 2004, and the city is planning for that date.

Conventional wisdom said only half of the Tongass forest timber was suitable as sawlogs, and something had to be found to be done with the other half. The answer resulted in the founding of the pulp mills, the only 50-year timber contracts ever awarded by the Forest Service, and in a requirement that logs coming off the national forest receive primary processing in Alaska. In reality, that meant sawlogs were squared off into barkless cants, while the so-called "utility" logs were chipped, boiled and pressed into sheets of pulp. The result was lots of then-rare, high-paying year-round jobs and great political support for the mills.

About 4.5 million board feet (mmbf) was to be made available from the Tongass annually, and the pulp mills, with their associated large sawmills, got the lion's share. That guaranteed supply, and what competitors said were favorable rules resulting in low prices, gave the pulp mills a decided edge over other businesses.

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