Timber

Every year, logging companies harvest tens of millions of board feet from the Tongass National Forest. At the same time, it can be surprisingly difficult for people living in and around the country’s largest national forest to get access to local timber. But that hasn’t stopped one Sitka woodworker from trying.

Frances Brann has a shipping container stacked high with the Southeast Alaska woodworker’s equivalent of pure gold: flitch cut yellow cedar planks.

Flitch cutting is a way of slicing up a log to get boards with matching grain — a prized commodity in fine woodworking circles. Brann is going to use these yellow cedar boards to build the interior of a sailboat.

She’s building the boat, which is still in the design phase, with her friend Erik de Jong, who is also a metalworker and naval architect. They plan to use the vessel to transport environmental researchers around the Arctic. The hull will be made of steel, strong enough to withstand the enormous pressure of getting frozen in by sea ice.

Brann, a professional woodworker and experienced blue water sailor, will construct the wooden interior. And it seems only reasonable to use environmentally friendly timber for an environmental research vessel.

“Preferably dead or salvage wood from trees that have fallen or had to be taken out for other reasons,” Brann said.

Now, you might think that living in the Tongass would make it easy to find whatever sort of wood product you need. But that’s not always the case, as Brann discovered when she tried to source local timber for carpentry projects.

“I was unable to buy any local lumber locally from any normal supplier,” Brann said. “I managed to pick up small pieces on Sitka for Sale,  somebody would have a little left over that they had got by who knows what method. And I scrounged little bits of local timber wherever I could.”

The irony of scrounging for wood scraps in the country’s largest national forest isn’t lost on Brann, who has long been frustrated with Alaska’s export-focused approach to timber management.

To be clear, getting your hands on any old stick isn’t the problem. Plenty of people gather firewood or get special-use permits to harvest specific trees. The hard part is finding locally-sourced boards and other value-added forest products; the material you would need to build a boat, for example.

That’s partly because the Tongass timber industry mainly ships unprocessed logs out of state. And for the smaller sawmills that do supply local markets, equipment costs can be a serious barrier to making processed building material.

Wes Tyler, owner of Icy Straits Lumber in Hoonah, says his mill is able to buy a wood drying kiln and manufacture value-added products thanks to a Forest Service grant it got in the early 2000s. But, he says, Icy Straits is more an exception to the rule when it comes to smaller-scale mills.

“You’ve gotta have space to do it,” Tyler said. “You gotta be able to put up buildings to put your machinery into. It’s just very expensive to put it all together.”

Southeast’s other mid-sized sawmill, Viking Lumber in Klawock, faces similar challenges with supply and production. And from the consumer side, even if you are able to purchase boards from one of these larger mills, the next challenge is transporting the material to your project site. For customers outside of Hoonah, or off the Prince of Wales road system, rolling up in your pickup truck isn’t an option. That leaves ferries and barges, or — in Frances Brann’s case — your other sailboat.

That’s how she got to Tenakee Springs, where Gordon Chew of Tenakee Logging Company had a standing dead yellow cedar with Brann’s name on it.

“I was really happy to meet her and I think she was surprised to discover that we were selectively harvesting species that she was interested in,” Chew said.

Tenakee Logging Company is a family operation that sells sustainably-harvested Tongass timber products to clients mainly within Alaska. Crucially for Brann, they harvest standing dead timber, meaning she could get her flitched yellow cedar without having to kill a tree.

For his part, Chew said it was rewarding to get involved in Brann’s project.

“This probably brings us the most satisfaction of any of our clients and that’s largely because of the fact that we are shipwrights, and boat builders and blue water sailors,” Chew said. “Also, you know new construction is quite rare, especially on the scale that Frances is attempting.”

After a fruitful trip to Tenakee, Brann sailed back to Sitka, the deck loaded down with over 1,000 pounds of wood. Going to this extreme to buy a relatively small amount of sustainably sourced local lumber has only hardened her opinion that the large companies exporting whole, unprocessed logs are pursuing a misguided strategy.

“If they would make construction longer, tongue and groove, take some of the really fine trees, sell them as flitches for fine woodworking and cabinetry, there’d be a tremendous market,” Brann said. “And I think you could actually have a timber industry that did something other than cost people money. ”

For now, though, Brann says she’s happy to have her flitch cut yellow cedar, which is neatly stacked and drying in the shipping container.

The Trump Administration is seeking a full exemption from the Roadless Rule in the Tongass National Forest.

Public comments found most people want to keep the federal rule in place. But state officials have been pushing hard to exempt Alaska — in part to help the state’s declining timber industry.

But one logging company says the industry is facing other challenges: Chinese tariffs. So they aren’t counting on a new inventory of trees just yet.

For Eric Nichols, head of Alcan Forest Products, times are hard.

In his Ketchikan office, he said calls to fix broken logging equipment can start rolling in at the crack of dawn.

Nichols oversees logging camps in remote locations, sometimes only accessible by boat or a small plane. Last year, the timber industry in Alaska employed just over 300 people. Nichols supplies paychecks for 50 of them. He said those jobs are important.

Still, it’s not always easy doing business.

“It’s a challenge up here,” Nichols said. “Especially a challenge because it’s government ownership on all the lands, and it’s an expensive place to operate.”

But that’s not Nichols only headache.

He now has to pay a tariff to export logs to his biggest customer: China. Over the summer, President Donald Trump’s trade war with the country escalated, and Alcan Forest Products’ tariff on spruce doubled.

“The 20% (tariff) hit us outta the blue,” Nichols said. “I really expected those guys to resolve their differences and solve this.”

At nearly 17 million acres, the Tongass National Forest engulfs most of Southeast Alaska. It’s part of the largest intact temperate rainforest on Earth.

The proposed exemption from the Roadless Rule means prohibitions on logging could be removed for millions of acres of old growth trees in the region.

Nichols said being able to log more valuable old growth trees in the Tongass would give him some flexibility to ride out the current global market. But he expects this change to the Roadless Rule could be litigated for years. And he’s not not sure if he can wait.

“We’re in our 60s, most of the people in this industry is,” Nichols said. “You gotta decide … is there a next generation coming or not?”

The U.S. Forest Service is holding public meetings across Southeast Alaska to discuss the proposed exemption to the Roadless Rule. A final decision is expected next year.

A version of this story first appeared on NPR’s “Morning Edition.”

On Friday, the U.S. Forest Service explained its decision to seek an exemption from the Roadless Rule for the Tongass National Forest. The agency published the information in the federal register.

The Forest Service acknowledged it gave “substantial weight to the state’s policy preferences” to be exempted from the federal rule. The agency also said this change would allow more “flexibility” in how the nation’s largest national forest is managed.

Austin Williams, an attorney with Trout Unlimited, doesn’t think that justification makes sense.

“What flexibility is going to mean … is that the Forest Service is going to have flexibility to plan timber sales in new areas that it has previously had off limits,” Williams said.

A change in the federal rule could open up over 9 million acres in the nation’s largest national forest. Though the federal agency says those lands “would not be scheduled or expected to be subject to timber harvests.”

The Forest Service could not be reached in time to provide additional comments.

In 2018, former Gov. Bill Walker signed off on a petition, asking for the Alaska exemption.

It’s something Gov. Mike Dunleavy has also pushed hard for. The Washington Post reported a conversation between Gov. Dunleavy and President Donald Trump in August encouraged the administration to lean toward granting Alaska a full exemption.

Tribal governments have expressed concern over the impact the exemption would have on hunting and fishing in the region. According to the Forest Service’s own summary of comments, most of the public said they wanted to keep the Roadless Rule in place.

The Forest Service is accepting public comments on the draft plan starting Oct. 19, 2019 until Dec. 17, 2019. A final decision is expected by 2020.

The U.S. Forest Service announced Tuesday that it’s seeking a full exemption from the Roadless Rule of the Tongass National Forest.

The rule, which has applied to Alaska for more than a decade, makes it difficult to build new roads through national lands. But the U.S. Forest Service is proposing changes that could make Alaska the only state that doesn’t have to follow it.

Of six alternatives listed in the plan, a full exemption is the Forest Service’s recommended choice.

Alaska’s congressional delegation has long pushed for the full exemption in the state, saying there needs to be more access to timber and energy opportunities in the region.

Owen Graham, President of Alaska Forest Association, agrees. He calls Tuesday’s announcement a “great thing.”

“What we want is year-round manufacturing jobs and a lot more stability,” said Graham.

But, he says, this is just one step in the right direction. Retaliation tariffs placed on logs shipped to China have been hitting some sectors of the small industry hard.

Graham is uncertain how long it will take to see big systemic changes in how the Tongass National Forest is managed.

“Right now the industry’s just crumbling apart. There’s hardly anybody left,” he said. “Every year we lose more of our loggers because there’s not enough to keep everyone going.”

The Forest Service has been considering a range of options for the Tongass. But in August, the Washington Post reported that a conversation between Gov. Mike Dunleavy and President Donald Trump tipped the scales, and the U.S. Forest Service started working on the full exemption.

Joel Jackson, the President of the Organized Village of Kake, says he’s worried about what these changes could mean for his community. Kake is a remote village that depends on the wild food the Tongass provides. Historically, large-scale industrial logging damaged salmon streams.

“You know it’s sad that we have to continue to fight our own government to protect our forests and streams,” Jackson said.

He says the Organized Village of Kake is considering filing a lawsuit against the Forest Service. He suspects many other organizations will, too.

“We don’t throw our hands up in the air. We just buckle down and start talking [about] what’s the next step,” he said.

The full exemption would release 9.2 million acres of wilderness from Roadless Rule protection and open 165,000 old-growth acres and 20,000 young-growth acres to logging. The change would only apply to the Tongass National Forest. The Chugach National Forest would remain under the Roadless Rule.

According to Chris French, a top Forest Service official, this could change how the Tongass is federally managed and undo a 2016 plan amendment to move away from old growth logging in the region.

The U.S. Forest Service will publish its justification for the change in the federal register later this week.

The public will have a chance to weigh in on the proposed change, which is included in the draft environmental impact statement, until Dec. 17.

A final decision is expected to be reached by 2020.

An organization of 57 tribal governments across the Northwest says the Roadless Rule should stay in place in Alaska. 

The Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians passed the resolution at its annual conference last week in Suquamish, Washington, at the request of the Organized Village of Kake. 

Right now, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is considering changes to the federal Roadless Rule. It could open up new areas to road building and logging in the Tongass National Forest. 

Tribal governments in Southeast Alaska, such as the one in Kake, are opposed to that. They’re concerned about the impact to traditional food sources, which rural communities rely on. 

The USDA is expected to release a draft decision about the Roadless Rule sometime this fall.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is in the middle of making a crucial decision about how it manages the Tongass National Forest.

In 2018, the state of Alaska was granted millions of dollars in federal funds to help facilitate dialogue about potential changes to the Roadless Rule, which could open up new areas of the Tongass to old-growth logging.

But a state records request reveals that a timber industry group was paid out of that grant for additional input, and some people involved in the rule-making process say that’s not fair.

What is the Roadless Rule?

The Roadless Rule debate has dragged on for decades. Last summer, when the U.S. Forest Service announced it would be looking at how the rule applies to Alaska, it was a big deal.

And the state wasn’t looking for a compromise. It wanted a full exemption — meaning Alaska wouldn’t be burdened by the same restrictions nearly all national lands have to follow, making it easier to build new roads through parts of the Tongass.

Access roads for logging have been a sticking point for the region’s struggling timber industry, which employs less people than a Walmart store. The remote location has made harvesting trees difficult, and the federal red tape made it nearly impossible, or so the argument goes.

Still, throughout this process, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has said that’s not the only reason she supports full exemption. In an interview this month, the Alaska Republican reiterated that she supports more access in the Tongass.

“Not necessarily just to access to timber, but access at all,” she said.

The state gets federal money to work on a state-specific rule

The Alaska Division of Forestry was awarded $2 million shortly after the Forest Service’s announcement last summer. It’s actually a modification of a grant that’s part of the USDA State Fire Assistance program. It’s typically used for things like fighting wildfires or insect prevention.

But in this case, it was awarded to the state to work on the Roadless Rule as a cooperating agency. Essentially, the state would be a point person to the federal government leading up to a final decision.

“I was kind of astonished about that,” said Andy Stahl, the executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, a watchdog group.

He said it’s not uncommon for the federal agency to grant states money. But given the circumstances in Alaska, he thinks this grant presents a conflict.

“The state has said, ‘Change the rule.’ And the federal government, which wrote the rule … turns around and says, ‘Here’s $2 million to help you convince us to change the rule.’ And that’s just weird,” Stahl said.

How the state spent the money

To date, the state has spent close to $500,000 on a variety of things, like putting together a citizen advisory committee. Last fall, former Alaska Gov. Bill Walker appointed a team of people representing diverse perspectives for that committee, from conservation groups to timber interests.

Together, they provided important feedback to top federal officials on how the Roadless Rule should apply to Alaska.

But the Alaska Forest Association — a timber industry group — has gotten another opportunity to weigh in. An opportunity that comes with a payment.

So far, the Alaska Forest Association has been given more than $200,000 in funds from the $2 million grant the state got from the Forest Service in 2018.

And there’s potentially more coming.

The Alaska Forest Association is under two contracts with the state, signed in March of this year, worth up to $360,000. The group is providing the industry’s perspective — how its business will be affected by changes to the Roadless Rule and work plans moving forward.

Stahl said the the Forest Service couldn’t have granted this money to the Alaska Forest Association directly, because the grant is being managed under state laws.

But he’s confused why the money is being given to a group with a clear agenda.

“Nobody in their right mind would turn to that organization for the unvarnished, dispassionate facts,” Stahl said. “You’d go hire a private consultant.”

But Chris Maisch, the director of the Alaska Division of Forestry, disagrees.

“We want a party that has the expertise and knowledge to give us an accurate answer, so that will inform our policy,” Maisch said.

He said spending a portion of the federal grant this way shouldn’t come as a surprise. The state regularly partners with stakeholder groups.

And since the fate of the timber industry is being considered, an industry group like the Alaska Forest Association makes the most sense in this role.

“The state has a vested interest in continuing the industry, and that’s what we’re trying to do,” Maisch said. “That’s the whole purpose behind the Roadless Rule petition.”

Another cooperating agency

Joel Jackson, the tribal president of the Organized Village of Kake, doesn’t think that’s OK.

Like the state, the tribal government is another cooperating agency. They’re also supposed to be providing context to the Forest Service as the decision gets made.

But unlike the state, Kake wasn’t granted any federal money to help make its case.

“We didn’t get any funding for staff to be working on (the Roadless Rule),” Jackson said. “And that’s very, very important, because we have limited funds.”

At times, Jackson said the small tribal government has scrambled to meet deadlines and provide meaningful comments.

If major changes are made to how the Tongass is managed, he said there’s a lot at stake for the village.

For example, he’s worried about food security. Historically, large-scale industrial logging damaged salmon streams.

“I want the people to know who don’t live out in the rural villages how important the salmon are to our people,” Jackson said.

The Forest Service wouldn’t provide comments for this story. Though the state said the Forest Service is aware of how the grant money is being spent.

An announcement on the Roadless Rule decision was expected to come out in draft form this summer, but it’s been delayed. A national report suggests, at Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s urging, that President Donald Trump’s administration is now working on a full Alaska exemption.