Tongass National Forest
Timber Sales on Tongass National Forest
Page 1: Forest Conditions in Southest Alaska
Page 2: Timber Sales on Tongass National Forest
Page 3: Roads through the Tongass provide access, but at what cost?
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At the heart of Southeast Alaska is the Tongass National Forest
The 17 million-acre Tongass, managed for all Americans by the U.S. Forest Service, is the largest National Forest in the country. Timber sales on the Tongass have resulted in the logging of more than 450,000 acres since the 1950s.2 But each time we sell some of our trees, we pay to build roads so that the timber companies can access them.
All that road building is expensive. In fact Tongass timber sales are losing up to tens of millions of dollars each year.3 And this figure reflects only net dollar losses. It does not include real losses in other services that these trees provide: losses in recreational value for Alaska’s tourism industry, which is the state's top employer, and losses in what are termed "ecosystem services," benefits such as climate regulation and waste treatment that have been valued for Alaska’s forests at $117 million annually.4
These maps are composites of Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper scenes acquired between 1999 and 2000. Areas of timber harvest (shown here in yellow) are based on this imagery as well as the Tongass National Forest timber inventory. Roads (shown here in red) are state highways or USFS logging roads. Logging roads on private lands are not shown.
What's more, areas that are already roaded still contain vast stores of commercially viable timber, up to 13 billion board-feet according to Forest Service data.5 By restricting logging to these already roaded areas, we will preserve remaining wildlands for other uses. And maybe actually turn a dollar profit on our timber sales.
We have an opportunity to preserve some crucial wildlands
Port Houghton and Farragut Bay (top map at right) contain the largest contiguous area of productive old forest habitat in the Tongass. Limiting the development to existing roaded areas would preserve places like this, maintaining habitat for salmon, deer and other species as well as preserving wilderness that supports jobs in the tourism, commercial fishing and sport fishing sectors.
There’s lots of timber available in already roaded areas
The Prince of Wales Island region (bottom map at right), 84% of which is part of the National Forest, is one area that has both roads (shown in red) and a large amount of accessible timber. Roaded areas like this contain billions of board-feet of standing old-growth, enough to support a sustainable logging industry. Estimates of available timber account for all provisions of the Tongass Land and Resource Management Plan, including protected buffers on eagle trees, riparian and beach-fringe forests, and so on.
