Forests - Land of the Giants

Today I'm in a bush plane flying above the Tongass with John Schoen, a former wildlife biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and now Alaska Audubon's senior scientist. As we leave Juneau and traverse the Mendenhall Glacier, a vast country of snow, ice, and rocky peaks appears below us, tumbling to the north and south along the Alaska–British Columbia border as far as the eye can see. Abutting this ice-age scene is a pastel-green land of tundra, flecked with the white spots of mountain goats. Below the tundra lies steep scrub forest and, finally—crowding the courses of the rivers at low elevations and fringing the beaches—the enormous dark-green, 300- to 800-year-old trees that are the hallmark of this coast. From the air, it's obvious—as Schoen has been telling me—that they're just a small part of the Tongass National Forest. In fact, they have always been rare, never comprising more than about a million acres, or roughly 6 percent of the Tongass. Since the 1950s, 437,000 acres of old growth have been clear-cut in the Tongass. Most significant, however, about half of the rare stands of the largest trees have already been cut. Today only 3 percent, or 539,000 acres, of the Tongass is made up of statuesque old growth that, like elephants or whales, seems out of an age when the world was young and filled with giants.

Yet many of these mighty trees will soon fall because the U.S. Forest Service has decided, under pressure from Congress and the White House, to forge ahead with additional logging in the roadless areas of the Tongass. In May, for example, the Forest Service announced plans for the Cholmondeley Sound Sale in the McKenzie Roadless Area, a massive logging operation that will concentrate mostly on large old-growth trees and will include 21 miles of new roads. This sale, set to take place in two parts, will fell 37 million board feet (each foot equals 144 cubic inches of timber) in a remote area of lakes, coves, and rolling terrain. The Finger Mountain Timber Sale in the Chichagof Roadless Area, near the place I am exploring with John Schoen, is expected to yield 22 million board feet of timber. An environmental-impact statement for this sale was expected as Audubon went to press. But what's already clear is that logging on this scale and in these places poses risks to Sitka black-tailed deer, goshawks, and many other kinds of wildlife.

Schoen and I land at Kadashan Bay on Chichagof Island to marvel at behemoths—both sylvan and ursine. No sooner do we step from the bush plane than we spy a group of brown bears and their offspring. One bear has a single cub; another, a pair. One is alone. They've been grazing on lush coastal grasses and chasing salmon in a shallow stream, sending up curtains of spray as their cubs intently observe their first fishing lessons. Although I've seen hundreds of brown bears in my life, my wonder at being near them—they're but a couple of football fields away—never flags. They live in that diminishing part of the globe where people are scarce and wildness is abundant. The bears, enjoying an ample supply of fish, treat us as they do other bears: After an initial inspection, they ignore us. We walk toward the forest but remain alert, pepper spray handy on our belts in case we surprise a bear at close quarters. We tramp through devil's club, blueberry, bunchberry, and trailing bramble, and walk over "bridges" of nursery trees—moss-covered logs from which seedlings sprout. Overhead the canopy soars into the low gray sky, where a varied thrush whistles. The fine drizzle has tapered off, and the air is full of the sweet scents of mulch and wet bark and greenery. Occasionally I stop to spread my arms against a tree trunk, unable to touch both sides.

Because of the area's short growing season and relatively poor soils, these Sitka spruces, hemlocks, and cedars aren't as large as the redwoods, sequoias, and cedars found in California, Oregon, and Washington. Yet they can grow to be 12 feet in diameter and more than 200 feet high. What really sets this forest apart is the presence of jumbo brown bears, the likes of which haven't been seen in most of the Lower 48 for a century. Signs of the bears abound here. We detour around big piles of bear scat, filled with berries, and pass daybeds—spots where bears doze through the warm hours, leaving behind long cinnamon-colored hair on the underbrush.

Sometimes we follow trails made by the bears themselves, veering now and then onto smaller tracks kept open by deer. It's a labyrinth—young and ancient trees, tiny streams, layered vegetation, and rotting logs all interconnected in one of the richer and more complex habitats on earth. Sweeping an arm across the forest, Schoen remarks, "This is excellent bear and deer habitat, with abundant cover and food dispersed throughout the forest."

He should know. Along with Matthew Kirchhoff of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, who has joined us on our hike, Schoen has studied both species extensively. In the 1980s the two men collaborated on groundbreaking fieldwork that studied habitats used by Sitka black-tailed deer. They found that in winter these southeastern Alaskan deer—the smallest subspecies of the mule deer, with big bucks weighing up to 150 pounds—frequent old growth 99 percent of the time. In winters with deep snow, deer prefer stands of big trees. The reason is clear: A circle of ground around each big tree is kept snow-free by the large branches above, allowing the deer to feed. Research done during the past decade has also shown that at least a half dozen other species depend on old growth. The fortunes of salmon rise and fall on the presence of big old trees, which moderate the flow and temperature of spawning streams by breaking up the channel with fallen branches and logs, and casting dappled shade on its surface. In turn, brown bears make their livings along these waterways. Goshawks, bald eagles, and marbled murrelets—small brown seabirds—also nest in old growth. The pine marten, a member of the weasel family, hunts for squirrels and voles among these big trees.

After half an hour of damp walking, we cross a small patch of second-growth conifers that have naturally regenerated, dominating an old clearcut and shading out the forest floor. For us, it's easier walking, but the ground seems emptier. Gone are the lush undergrowth, the berries, the potential nesting sites—the forest's full old-growth complexity.

In essence, this is Schoen's and Kirchhoff's take-home message: The ancient forest here is rare and nonrenewable; it provides diverse ecological benefits; and once it's cut down, it's gone. Stands of "giant" old-growth trees—6 to 10 feet in diameter—contain more than 50,000 board feet per acre and make up less than one percent of the entire land area of the Tongass National Forest. Stands of "big" old-growth trees—3 to 6 feet in diameter—make up just 3 percent of the Tongass and yield 30,000 to 50,000 board feet per acre.

The two massive trunks (center and right) are the hallmarks of old growth. The dead and down trees on a wet rug of moss are decomposing, thus restoring invaluable nutrients to the living forest.

Photo by Michio Hoshino/Minden Pictures

According to Kirchhoff, who did a search of Forest Service records, at least 50 percent of the Tongass's "giants" have been cut thus far. Few of those that remain have permanent protection. In fact, even though 6.6 million acres of the Tongass has been set aside under national wilderness, national monument, and "no-development" designations, most of these protected areas contain a high percentage of rock, ice, tundra, and small trees. About 25,000 acres of the Tongass's giant trees and 216,000 acres of its big trees have been permanently preserved by Congress. "The logging industry had already taken the best of these large old trees, as have native corporations," Schoen says. "What's left unprotected is highly valuable ecologically. Many of these trees are in watersheds without roads, they're crucial to wildlife, and we don't have confidence that the Forest Service and the logging industry won't eventually go in there and take out the best timber."

Others have shared his fears. Led by the Sierra Club, conservationists sued the Forest Service over its 1997 Tongass management plan, which didn't address adding any new wilderness areas to the forest. In 2001 an Alaska Federal District Court ruled in the Sierra Club's favor and ordered the Forest Service to go back to the drawing board to see if any of the Tongass's roadless areas should be recommended for wilderness preservation. During the comment period, 95 percent of the 175,000 Americans who weighed in were in favor of some additional wilderness protection. In Alaska, 86 percent of those who testified favored more wilderness. They came from all walks of life: Sport fishing and hunting guides spoke passionately about old growth's vital importance to the wildlife they depend on for their livings. Commercial salmon fishermen stressed old growth's link to the fish's spawning streams. Even some loggers favored increasing protections for old growth. As Mike Sallee, an owner of a small sawmill near Ketchikan, wrote, "The USFS's only alternatives are either no harvests or large-scale harvests that destroy . . . old-growth character."

Nonetheless, last February, while the Forest Service was still under court order to consider additional wilderness areas, Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, attached a rider to the annual appropriations bill barring legal challenges to the Forest Service's final decision not to add wilderness to the Tongass. Nine days later the Forest Service recommended that no new wilderness areas be added. Enough wilderness had already been created in the Tongass, the Forest Service determined, to meet the requirements of the Wilderness Act. Besides, they said, old growth would be preserved in roadless areas.
Of course, these areas lack permanent protection, and the White House and Alaska's delegation are doing their best to open them to logging (see "Roads to Ruin," Audubon, March). In July the administration released a proposal to exempt the Tongass from the landmark three-year-old Roadless Area Conservation Rule, thus paving the way for 50 potential timber sales in the forest. "The administration is handing over to special interests some of the most intact old-growth temperate rainforest left in the world," says Bob Perciasepe, Audubon's senior vice-president for public policy. "This is not a policy based on what's good for birds and other wildlife; it's a policy based on what's good for the timber industry."

Doing its best to honor public sentiment yet feeling the heat from Washington, the Forest Service has said that it would log only 10 percent of the Tongass's remaining stands of giant and big trees—51,000 acres over the next 10 years. Though the acreage may not sound high, it deeply concerns Schoen. "Considering past cutting—much of it focused on the larger trees—this isn't balanced forest management," he says. "You have to focus on a watershed scale. These big trees may make up a small part of a valley, but they're critical to a whole suite of wildlife. Removing them could have a large impact on some of the species, and if we cut many watersheds, then we've reduced the diversity of the entire forest."

Steve Seley, the owner of Ketchikan-based Pacific Log and Lumber, hotly disagrees. He insists that to stay in business, he needs to cut a few 500-year-old trees, whose tight, even-grained wood is valuable for making such musical instruments as guitars and violins, and for piano sounding boards. He also maintains that he pays the highest wages in Ketchikan and that his company is a linchpin of the community. "It's flawed thinking to say that we're going to let this timber grow up and fall down and rot. It's a resource to be used for the good of everyone."

But sadly, few of the Tongass's big old trees ever sound a musical note. Instead they go into construction-grade lumber for mundane everyday objects like floor joists, rafters, and decking material. This in a time when many superior substitutes exist, including composite lumber products made from chips, sawdust, and glue that are stronger, straighter, and less prone to warping than natural lumber.

Not only does logging the Tongass make poor environmental sense, it also turns out to be a monumental boondoggle. According to Graham Owen, director of the Alaska Forest Association, a timber-industry group, in 2002 only 800 people worked year-round in the timber industry, compared with 3,516 in 1989—a drop of 77 percent. And this was in a year in which the Forest Service spent about $16.5 million to prepare logging projects and build roads in the Tongass while taking in only about $2.4 million—a net loss to taxpayers of more than $14 million.

If all the planned sales proceed, and that's doubtful (the Forest Service admits that a third of the timber sales planned for the Tongass have failed to attract any bidders because of competition in world markets from countries such as Brazil and New Zealand), their benefit to American mill workers would be limited: 20 percent of minimally processed logs from the Tongass are annually exported to Asia.

While the number of logging jobs in the Tongass has plummeted, peak-season employment in tourism—lodging, restaurants, and recreation—has grown from 3,450 in 1995 to 5,050 in 2002, a 33 percent increase, says Neal Gilbertsen, an economist with Alaska's Labor Department. As evidenced by the responses the Forest Service received during its public-comment period, an overwhelming majority of Alaskans, as well as most Americans who weighed in, want less logging in the Tongass National Forest. Given this fact—and the technological changes that have taken place in the wood-products industry, allowing it to squeeze ever more profits from second growth—one has to ask why it is so imperative to cut any of these grand old, ecologically important trees, all of which, it must be added belong to all Americans, not to the logging industry.

I dwell on these issues while paddling along the wooded northeast coast of Kuiu Island during my last few days in Alaska. I'm passed by porpoises and overflown by steady streams of mergansers, harlequin ducks, and bald eagles. Two humpback whales approach, spouting explosively. In the endless sunset of an Alaskan evening, I walk from camp, down the rocky beach and into the forest, where the light becomes filtered and the air is cool. I've been looking for stands of big trees, and here they are: 8, 9, 10 feet across. The Forest Service will now put these giants up for sale. But neither the administration nor Congress is known for paying attention to either science or fiscal prudence. In a time of record deficits, they continue to subsidize the clear-cutting of these rare monarchs. It's astonishing; it's mortifying; it seems exactly like killing elephants to make billiard balls from their tusks.

Ted Kerasote wrote "Roads to Ruin," Audubon's March story on national forests. Heart of Home, a collection of his essays, will be out in paperback this fall from Lyons Press.