Forest chief takes heat on timber sales

The Chief of the U.S. Forest Service defended its plan today (March 3) to reduce the number of ten-year timber sales in Southeast Alaska. Tom Tidwell appeared before the Senate Energy Committee to explain the President’s budget requests for next year. He admitted to Senator Lisa Murkowski that if the goal is to sustain communities in Southeast, things must change. Murkowski is upset because in 2008 the Forest Service promised to have four decade-long timber sales in the Tongass National Forest, of up to 200 million board feet each. But now instead it wants to convert two of those sales to what are called “stewardship” contracts, and only offer half the board-feet in small parcels. Murkowski asked Tidwell what happened to the commitment made by his agency. The director says the goal is to make sure timber harvests go forward. But Murkowski says the second largest remaining mill in Southeast just closed and now only has six employees, and the only large mill left is, in her words, desperately worried about its timber supply. “You say that the trend is improving, going from 600 employees to six is not a trend I want to see. Recognizing that we’ve got one remaining large mill, the second largest timber-related construction company is gone. So to me these are not trends I want to continue. I want to take it back the other way,” Murkowski says...more