The U.S. Forest Service recently announced its long-awaited “Record of Decision” on the Tongass logging transition, and not much has changed from the draft. While all parties agree that an end to old growth logging is nearing, the agency’s plan does little to preserve old growth or, equally concerning, assure industry viability through accelerated testing of modern sawing technology required for economic transition. The Forest Service is slow-walking the transition by missing a unique opportunity to take advantage of a “wall of second growth wood” soon available to offset old growth logging.
For the past three years, Geos Institute and partners have been providing the Forest Service with state-of-the art field inventories of second-growth forests never before accomplished in Southeast Alaska. Forests clearcut in the 1950s have since regrown and were thinned by foresters to increase tree growth. Because they are accessible to open roads and have low environmental values, they come with reduced logging costs and little controversy.
Last summer, our field teams measured the size, age, and productivity of young trees in five Tongass Ranger Districts where currently operating sawmills are located. The inventories were needed to help solve for timber volume uncertainties the industry raised. What we found surprised everyone. Second growth trees are larger and taller than expected, with only 5 percent defect in trees harvested instead of 50 percent in old growth trees. Merchantable timber volume per acre at harvest time is much higher than expected.
Given new timber cruise results, it was determined that a transition could begin as soon as 2020 with far less old growth logging. About 125,000 acres of reduced costs, low controversy acres will be old enough (55-65 years) at harvest time to achieve sustained levels not seen since the 1980s. Some old growth trees would be needed for transition phasing and specialty products manufacturing, but at much lower volumes than currently proposed.
We also teamed up with forward-thinking members of the Alaska timber industry, proposing a demonstration project to determine the marketability of young trees using modern sawmilling technology (HewSaw) that efficiently processes smaller diameter logs with little waste. This technology has been installed in many mills across the U.S. and Canada, but it has not been tested in Alaska.
In partnership with Thorne Bay’s Good Faith Lumber Company, we proposed to test the technology on Alaska second growth. Good Faith lumber will harvest and process 65-year-old trees purchased from the Tongass in 2015. HewSaw Machines Inc. will construct a portable log scanner line in Thorne Bay to service Good Faith Lumber, documenting results that could be achieved by retrofitting outdated sawing headrigs to more efficient processing.
The project will provide new technical information beneficial to not only the Forest Service, but also the industry at large, and is to be privately funded. Should test results look positive, a retrofit would cost about $5 million installed, with manufacture and installation completed within 6-12 months, far less money and transition time than anyone imagined. Regardless, the Forest Service denied an industry request for a letter of support for the project, stating they needed no new information to move forward with the transition.
While there are conservation gains in the current transition plan, the losses and controversy will pile up over the next 16 years as old growth is needlessly sacrificed and transition economics pose ongoing doubts for industry. In short, no one wins in this scenario.
The Tongass transition plan is an embarrassment to the Obama Administration’s climate change policies. In a recent pronouncement in Oslo, Norway, Secretary of State John Kerry called on governments to do more to protect forests that absorb carbon dioxide pollution. When President Obama visited Alaska in September 2015, he called Alaska the nation’s “signpost” for climate change. Logging another 43,000 acres of Tongass old growth as proposed by the Forest Service would release the equivalent emissions of about 4 million vehicles annually with most of this global warming pollution coming early on when prudent climate actions are desperately needed.
Presidential action is needed to get the Tongass on track with national forests that transitioned years ago. The Tongass remains the only national forest in the country still clearcutting vast tracts of old growth. It doesn’t have to be this way.
• Dominick A. DellaSala, Ph.D., is chief scientist of Ashland-Oregon based Geos Institute and author of “Temperate rainforests of the World: Ecology and Conservation.” Catherine Mater is CEO of Mater Engineering, Ltd. Jim Furnish is a retired deputy chief of the Forest Service and supervisor of the Siuslaw National Forest in Oregon.
