Trout Unlimited working to keep Alaska wild

November 01, 2006
Grand Junction Sentinel (CO)
By Dave Buchanan

Trout Unlimited is taking a lead role in restoring southeast Alaska fisheries damaged by logging.

From fighting erosion caused by clear-cuts and road-building to replacing culverts vital for fish passage to spawning sites, the TU Alaska Program is reminding anglers everywhere that in spite of its apparent remoteness, the 17-million acre Tongass National Forest is a public treasure.

“This is a near-pristine area owned by every American,” said Scott Hed (rhymes with ‘made’), outreach director for the Sportsman’s Alliance for Alaska. “When sportsmen think of Alaska, this is the ultimate dream, the last of the last best places.”

Prince of Wales Island is a microcosm of what’s happening throughout the Tongass and Alaska wildlands in general, said Tim Bristol, Juneau-based director of the TU Alaska Program.

Even though logging is in decline on Prince of Wales, the U.S. Forest Service continues to stress logging over the growing recreation and sport-fishing industries.

“The old-line Forest Service doesn’t want to give up its logging subsidies,” Bristol said during a tour of clear-cut areas on Prince of Wales. “Most of that goes into road building, yet many of the roads are closed because the Forest Service doesn’t have the money to maintain them.”

Logging has declined for several reasons, including competition from cheap foreign timber and the 1997 shutdown of the pulp mill in Ketchikan.

“The best (lumber on Prince of Wales) has already been cut and no one wants the rest,” said Bristol, explaining that roughly one-third of Prince of Wales’s 2,600-square miles is rock and snow, one-third muskeg and one-third timber. “Only 4 percent of the timber was commercially desirable, high-volume old-growth lumber, and 60 percent of that has already been logged.”

Although none of the big logging companies show interest in the remaining lumber, the Forest Service subsidizes the Tongass timber industry to the tune of $40 million per year, according to Hed.

“That’s a subsidy of more than $170,000 each for the fewer than 200 logging jobs on the Tongass,” he said

We saw culverts under logging roads that had been undercut by erosion, their downhill end hanging well above the stream and blocking passage by salmon.

“Each one of these small streams probably had a spawning run at one time,” Bristol said. “There’s something like 1,500 culverts that need replacing.”

Bristol said a clear-cut forest can take 200 years to return to its pre-logging state. Instead of clear-cuts, TU is developing a program utilizing small-area, selective-cut logging with minimal environmental impacts.

Information about conservation programs in Alaska is available atwww.sportsmansalliance4ak.org and www.tu.org.

Dave Buchanan can be reached via e-mail at dbuchanan@gjds.com.

Date: 11/1/2006