Logging
Timber harvest in Southeast Alaska consisted of individual handlogging operations up until the 1950s, focusing on lowlying areas and beach fringe areas. In the 1950s, in part to aid in Japanese recovery from World War II, the Forest Service set up long-term contracts with two pulp mills: the Ketchikan Pulp Company (KPC) and the Alaska Pulp Company. These contracts were scheduled to last 50 years, and originally intended to complement independent sawlog operations in the region. However, the two companies conspired to drive log prices down, put smaller logging operations out of business, and were major and recalcitrant polluters in their local areas. Ultimately, virtually all timber sales on the Tongass were purchased by one of these two companies.
In 1974, the KPC contract for Northern Prince of Wales was challenged by the Point Baker Association led by Alan Stein, Chuck Zieske and Herb Zieske. Federal District Court Judge Von Der Hydt ruled in their favor in December 1975 and March 1976, enjoining clearcutting of over 150 square miles (390 km2) of the north end of Prince of Wales Island. The suit threatened to halt clearcutting in the United States. In 1976, Congress removed the injunction in passing the National Forest Management Act, a direct response to their law suit. Over half the old growth timber was removed there by the mid 1990s.
An attempt to privatize the northern end of POW on this, our nation's, first national forest will be made by Senators Murkowski and Begich when they attempt to transfer the land to the Sealaska Corporation.
Much of the power of these companies lay in the long-term contracts themselves. The contracts guaranteed low prices to the pulp companies — in some cases resulting in trees being given away for "less than the price of a hamburger." Alaska Pulp Corporation and Ketchikan Pulp Corporation closed down their mills in 1993 and 1997, respectively, and the Forest Service then cancelled the remainders of the two 50-year timber contracts.
In 2003, an appropriations bill rider required that all timber sales on the Tongass must be positive sales, meaning, no sales could be sold that undervalued the "stumpage" rate, or the value of the trees as established by the marketplace (2008 Appropriations Bill P.L. 110-161, H. Rept. 110-497, Sec. 411). However, the Forest Service also conducts NEPA analyses, layout, and administrative operations to support these sales, and as such, the government does not make a profit overall. Given the guaranteed low prices during contract days and the continued high cost of logging in Southeast Alaska today, one analysis concludes that, since 1980, the forest service has lost over a billion dollars in Tongass timber sales. Logging operations are not the only deficit-run programs, however. The Forest Service likens the overall deficit of the timber harvest program to the many other programs the agency operates at a deficit, including trail, cabin, and campground maintenance and subsistence programs.
High-grading (preferentially targeting for logging the most profitable forest types) has been prevalent on the Tongass throughout the era of industrial-scale logging there. For example, the forest type with the largest concentration of big trees—volume class 7 -- originally comprised only 4% of the forested portion of the Tongass, and over two-thirds of it has been logged. Other high-grading has concentrated on stands of Alaska cedar and red cedar. The karst terrain often produces large trees and has fewer muskeg bogs, and has also been preferentially logged.
As of 2008, the forest service has released a new amendment to the Forest Plan for the Tongass Forest.
Read more about this topic: Tongass National Forest