In Alaska, Help for Logging Comes Late

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/29/national/29FORE.html?th=&pagewanted=pr
int&position=
February 29, 2004
By FELICITY BARRINGER
KETCHIKAN, Alaska - This town of 7,500 people, clinging to tide-swept
black rocks near the bottom of the southeastern archipelago of this
state, still sees its future in its past. Jilted by the timber industry
that was a central part of the economy for 40 years, many people in this
town and other former timber centers in the region believe that the bays
will be paved with logs again, and that the 2,000 missing jobs will
return.
The Bush administration recently stoked their hopes, and infuriated
environmentalists, by opening 330,000 acres of the Tongass National
Forest, old-growth rain forest and marshland the size of West Virginia,
to logging roads.
In a classic struggle between jobs and the environment, the government
has tilted the balance in favor of jobs, citing as a reason for its
decision "the severe effect on the social and economic fabric of life in
southeast Alaska from the decline in the timber industry."
But few of those involved, certainly not federal or state officials,
bother to say that the traditional debate is now almost beside the
point. Global timber markets have undergone fundamental shifts. There is
a worldwide timber glut. Logging costs in this region are historically
much higher than in other parts of the world, making profits elusive at
best.
Economists and others who study the Northwest timber industry say they
doubt that companies returning to the Tongass's stands of old-growth
hemlock, cedar and spruce trees will find buyers willing to pay enough
to keep local loggers in business.
Gov. Frank H. Murkowski, a Republican, told reporters in December that
the rule change, announced that month, was "a vital step in our plan to
rebuild the southeast timber industry." 
But Brian Zak, president of the Coast Forest and Lumber Association, an
industry group in neighboring British Columbia, offered a more stark
assessment in a recent interview, saying, "Any time you lose market
share, it's nigh impossible to get it back."
Scott Fitzwilliams, a federal Forest Service employee who spent the last
three years in Sitka, northwest of Ketchikan, said that the debate over
logging in the Tongass always had more to do with emotion than economic
reality. For opponents of logging, the Tongass has a strong emotional
pull as a remnant of the primeval immensity of the North American
wilderness.
"I really believe it gets down to the real or created vision of the last
of the last great places," Mr. Fitzwilliams said of the debate. "The
thought of punching a road in there or taking a chain saw to it gets to
people."
The wildness is still palpable in Ketchikan, which is shouldered onto a
riverbank so close to cliffs that one lane of the main highway goes
through the cliff itself. It is as common to see a bald eagle flying low
above the streets here as it is to see a sea gull in Greenwich Village.
The industry's growth here was a product of the national imperatives of
the 1950's, said Stephen Haycox, a history professor at the University
of Alaska. In cold war terms, Alaska was close to the enemy. It was
considered strategically prudent to increase the population.
But what were the new residents going to do? Well, there were a lot of
trees. So Washington encouraged the start-up of three pulp mills by
giving them 50-year contracts. By 1973, the Forest Service reported,
timber harvests had increased ninefold, to an average of about 350
million board feet a year.
Then the environmental movement focused on the Tongass. Legislation to
extend the contracts for 15 years failed in Congress in the face of
sharp opposition from environmental groups, and in 1993 and 1997, the
last two pulp mills closed.
Without the mills, profitable harvesting was difficult. The mills made
pulp from hemlock trees, which are abundant in the Tongass but are
smaller and less valuable than other species when sold as logs. With the
closing of the mills and the rise of tree farming around the world, the
old economics no longer worked.
Not all environmentalists favor ending logging. Wayne Weihing, a former
sawmill worker who is now an environmental advocate in Ketchikan, sees
no problem with the current level of logging in the Tongass, which at 50
million board feet annually or less is barely enough to support one
medium-size sawmill.
"We have to reinvent the industry," Mr. Weihing said. "We're logging and
building roads in places where we don't need it. These places are much
more valuable as recreation areas."
In the mid-1990's, logging and wood products made up 12 percent of the
employment base in Ketchikan, a 1999 study by the Alaska labor
department found. The closing of the mills, with 500 jobs, cut that
share in half. Cruise ships are now a core industry, and the city
government is the largest employer.
Three moderate-sized family-owned sawmills remain in the Tongass:
Pacific Log and Lumber in Ketchikan, Silver Bay Logging in Wrangell and
Viking Lumber in Craig. The Forest Service, besides giving them and
their smaller competitors access to timber that had been off-limits,
recently announced it would allow logging companies to cancel
money-losing contracts for timber and would offer those rights at lower
prices.
Richard Buhler, president of Silver Bay, is taking up the Forest Service
on its offer and turning back thousands of partly harvested acres,
including the Upper Carroll area, on the mountainsides that rise from a
glittering inlet east of Ketchikan. He has logged part of the tract but
says he cannot cut the remaining trees profitably at the price he bid
more than seven years ago.
"I believe that it's got a future," Mr. Buhler said of the Alaska timber
industry. "One of our big strong points is that the tree farms can't
compete with the quality of our wood."
But Alaska is not alone in its economic doldrums. Along coastal British
Columbia, timber sales have bumped generally downward for about 15
years. 
Niche markets endure: Alaskan yellow cedar is still used for Japanese
tatami rooms and Sitka spruce for sounding boards in high-end guitars.
As Peter Butzelaar, a consultant with a Vancouver firm, R.E. Taylor &
Associates, said: "That resource does have market potential. The market
does value Alaska's resource.
"But can it get to market competitively today?" Mr. Butzelaar asked.
"Conditions say no."

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