Cutting the cathedral: the war over the future of Alaska's Tongass, America's largest old-growth national forest.

Max Brown's eyes twinkle as we watch the loggers scramble up the steep mountainside, slinging cables around spruce logs, making them ready to be dragged in for harvesting. The chokermen look like squirrels swarming nimbly over the multi-ton giants. "I used to do that," says Max, with the slow, soft-spoken good humor common among American Indians. He is Tlinget, of the Eagle Clan, and has lived all his life in Kake Village, population 700, on Kupreanof Island, Alaska, where the Kake tribe owns 22,000 acres of forest lands. "And then I got too old to run up and down the mountain. But I didn't like it so much sitting in there. I liked being outside." Now, a bit on the round side and relegated to the motor pool, he's still spry and tough enough to jump down and fix a truck's suspension when it bumps loose on the rough logging road. Timber is his business, and it's one that's done well for Max and the people of Kake.

Carl Winsenberg is the general superintendent for Phoenix Logging Company, presently contract logging for Hydacorp, the Haida tribe native corporation, on the west side of Prince of Wales Island (just south of Kupreanof). He's been a logger for 50 of his 70 years, but from his easygoing manner, you'd hardly know he was running a multi-million dollar operation."The secret is I've got good men," he says. "They're really a great bunch of guys. So I don't have to do much." He's proud of his work, and doesn't seem to understand or be much bothered by the criticism he knows is out there. "See that area," he says, driving us to a thick canopied forest with trees two feet in diameter. "That was cut maybe only 40 years ago. It just grows so fast here." Carl remains mild and matter-of-fact as he defends logging the ancient forest. "The old growth is rotting," he concludes simply. "People need wood, and it's a shame to let it sit there and go to waste."

Keeton Gildersleeve owns a mobile logging town. As big as a few football fields, it contains homes, workshops, a mess hall, even a school. The town with no fixed address is called "Tolstoi," and it's been part of the Gildersleeve family logging business for three generations. Keeton's grandfather's original house still sits there, propped up on logs cut 50 years ago from this same forest. Keeton's family, as well as wives and children of his employees, live, work, and go to school here. The giant raft has been many places following logging contracts, but it's never far from Prince of Wales Island. For the past two years it has been parked in a scenic cove on the eastern shore, a short boat ride from the site where Gildersleeve Lumber Company is cutting for Sealaska, another native corporation. For Keeton and his wife, Tolstoi is not their job, it's their home.

Treasuring the Tongass

What Max, Carl, and Keeton have in common is the Tongass National Forest. Covering most of the southeast Alaska "panhandle," the Tongass is far and away the nation's largest national forest, spreading over 500 miles, and with more land area than the state of West Virginia. Touted by conservation groups as having "some of the last wide expanses of pristine temperate rainforest in North America, an ecosystem even rarer than the tropical rainforest," there is no question the Tongass is the grand-daddy of America's forests and one of our most valuable and unique national treasures.

There is also no question that a big part of that value is due to the presence of square mile after square mile of the rarest, tallest, finest grained spruce and cedar anywhere. That's about where the agreement ends. The Alaskan timber industry, (supported by its powerful congressional delegation) and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) want to log it; environmental groups want to save it. All three churn out piles of studies, newsletters and proposals, full of pie charts and projections showing why their particular program is vital to the survival of southeast Alaska.

What's going on? Critics report that USFS loses millions of dollars each year by heavily subsidizing clearcutting in Alaska's ancient forests and providing huge amounts of cheap timber to large timber corporations with preferential contracts. Conservation groups like Southeast Alaska Conservation Council (SEACC) point out that"nearly a million acres - almost half the prime old growth - have been clearcut already," with most of the best wood going to Japan. According to Tim Bristol, a SEACC grassroots organizer, "Red and yellow cedar, for instance, is so much more valuable on the Asian market that very little of it is consumed in the U.S. Now we're seeing logs sent 'in the round' to Japan, which means that very few primary processing jobs are being supported here." A rule of thumb, says Bristol, is that logging creates a mere four and a half U.S. jobs per million board feet. Allen E. Smith, The Wilderness Society's regional director in Anchorage, adds, "For the last 40 years, they've been cutting at a rate four times that of forest regeneration."

In Alaska, newspapers flame with equal outrage in the opposite direction. Forest industry advocates like the Alaska Forest Association (AFA) say that conservation groups - and their supporters in the White House - are hiding the facts, ignoring science, and trying to shut down the Tongass timber industry.

According to Jack Phelps, AFA's executive director, this is the truth they don't hear down south: "A small amount of the Tongass is logged each year in carefully spaced patch-sized clearcuts, which do not harm fish or wildlife. It grows back so lush that it actually needs thinning. Since 1954, only 3.9 percent of the forested acreage has been harvested, and logging will never cover more than 10 percent (1.7 million) of the Tongass' 17 million acres. At the end of a 100-year rotation, the forest will be ready to harvest again, and a perpetual, sustainable timber base will exist which will provide timber and jobs for the indefinite future, with no need to have ever touched the remaining 90 percent or any of the old growth in it. The logging limits proposed by conservation groups would cost thousands of people their jobs and homes, devastate the economy of southeast Alaska, and deprive the country of a needed timber source."

Are we killing our ancient forest forever by logging? Or are we devastating the Alaskan economy to protect 10 percent of a forest which regenerates in a lifetime? I wanted to know, because I have always considered myself an environmentalist, with what I believe is a commonly held awe for our great forests, part of the American tradition since Daniel Boone. But Daniel Boone also built log cabins, and as an owner of a small construction business, I am also interested in the price of lumber. I decided to see for myself.

The Tongass Story

Kake Tribal Corporation has been logging in earnest ever since the government allowed it to select land out of the Tongass National Forest in 1971. Like most native corporations in the southeast, it selected the best logging land it could find. Max admits that the tribe's forests have been cut faster than they should have. "We made a mistake," he says simply. "They went too fast in the beginning there." Now most of Kake's land is cleared, with maybe five years of logging left, and no second growth ready to cut for 50 years. I asked Corporation President Gordon Jackson what they will do during those 50 years to make up for the loss of logging income. "Sealaska has seven more years east of here," he said. "And then there's the national forest."

The Kake natives don't seem too worried. Most have received checks totaling close to $100,000 over the last 10 years, mainly from logging profits. More of the profits went to buy a new cold storage plant, which a tour guide told me can process a million-dollars in salmon roe a day.

Max shows us a young second-growth stand, which has come up from a clearcut 20 years old. "See how close they are together?" he asks. "They're ready for thinning. We take out as many hemlocks as we can to let the spruce get bigger." Max points to an old-growth hillside, not yet cut. "That's over-ripe," he says, "full of rotten trees [called "snags"]. It needs to be harvested." We heard the same theme from Carl at the Hydacorp site: To foresters, old growth is just that - old and sickly; a "healthy forest" means healthy trees.

Biologists see it another way. Second growth is "even aged" - all the same age and height, with a solid canopy that prevents anything from growing underneath. The forest floor remains a "biological desert": nothing lives there.

In old-growth forests (over 250 years old), all that changes. Trees fall or get blown down, and the forest becomes "uneven aged," with multiple canopy layers and openings for light. An undergrowth develops, full of life, with moss, grasses and brush, necessary for wildlife. To the ecologist, this is the "healthy" forest, the climax forest in its stable, natural state, rotten snags and all.

I asked Carl about life under the second growth. "Sure, it's a biological desert under there," he admits. "But we've got plenty of deer. They like the clearcuts." This attitude was echoed by Bob Simmons, a logging engineer with the USFS in Ketchikan: "We don't destroy the ecosystem; a lot of times wildlife do better when there is logging."

Unfortunately, biologists say this only works where there is a mosaic of old and young forest. In practice, the USFS' "carefully spaced patch-sized clearcuts" are placed next to other young clearcuts, leaving broad areas with no winter cover. Any possible mosaic is many decades in the future. Kake's clearcuts, on native land (and not subject to Forest Service cutting limits), cover an entire peninsula; with no canopy, most wildlife is gone. "I used to walk to trees 11 steps around; now I cry at the devastation," says Kake local Patrick Bean.

Jackie Canterbury, a wildlife biologist and Tongass specialist for USFS until 1995, scoffs at the idea that clearcuts can replace the functions of a forest thousands of years old. "For one thing, even on a 150-year rotation, all the largest trees are gone forever. But this isn't just about losing big trees, it's about losing the heart of an ecosystem. Grizzlies and salmon, eagles and deer, wolves and black bears - they all depend on functions that the old growth can perform, but the second growth can't. When you have thousands of contiguous acres of second growth like they are proposing, those processes are lost for centuries."

Back on Prince of Wales Island, where Hydacorp and most of the national forest logging are centered, we followed the assembly line-like process from forest to freighter. After cutting, a drag line pulls the logs in off the slope to the road, where they are loaded into trucks. Then it's down to the water and the sorting yard, where a beehive of activity is going on. Appraisers rate the logs, a shovel loader sorts them into piles, they are bundled and then carried by giant front-end loaders to the shore for rafting to transfer ships. While we were there, representatives of Japanese buyers flew in on seaplanes to check out the merchandise.

Logging is dangerous work, and out in the field it takes skill, endurance and teamwork. There is a camaraderie and pride among the loggers, but I never met one who, when asked about the future, did not readily admit that the industry was winding down in the Tongass.

How Much Is Too Much?

The statistics being thrown around might leave the public understandably confused about what exactly is going on in the Tongass. The forest industry claims that only "3.9 percent of the forested acres" has been harvested since 1954. Yet SEACC proclaims that "almost half of the prime old growth... has been clearcut."

How much of the Tongass is gone? Is it four percent, or 50 percent? The best scientific consensus, when the numbers jungle is cleared, is that almost a million acres - 13 percent of the original old-growth forest - has been cut. But the really valuable fine-grained timber, the grand old daddies ruling the realm, the six to 10 (or more) foot wide, 200-plus-foot tall, 500 to 1,000-year-old monsters, live only in what's called "High Volume Old Growth." With its high, multi-layered canopy and patches of undergrowth, this is the cathedral forest of legend. It is these areas that loggers so desperately want to cut, and environmentalists so desperately want to save.

How much of the big stuff is left? In 1991, 11 percent of the forest was officially said to be "high volume," down from about 25 percent before logging. In 1995, however, the USFS redefined the old categories, and now it says that 45 percent of the forest is old growth. Even at 45 percent, however, the AFA claim that "only 10 percent of the Tongass will ever be logged" refers to 10 percent of the National Forest political boundaries. It translates to cutting one third of the forest land, and almost half the high-volume old growth.

But the underlying question is not over numbers; it's over policy. What should the purpose of the forest be? Can the forest survive with the amount of logging the timber industry wants? Can Southeast Alaska's economy survive without it?

The Economic Consequences

Creating jobs, Congress in 1951 gave the Ketchikan Pulp Company (KPC) a 50-year contract, which compelled the USFS to sell KPC (a Louisiana-Pacific subsidiary) 200 million board feet of timber - about 10,000 acres of high-volume old growth - per year at a guaranteed price. At the close of the 1996 Congress, after KPC threatened to shut down because it was losing money, powerful Alaskan Republican Senator Frank Murkowski tried - and failed - to slip important concessions and extensions for Louisiana-Pacific into the omnibus parks bill. But after Murkowski threatened to hold the parks bill hostage, the White House agreed to a settlement which allowed Louisiana-Pacific to close its money-losing pulp mill last April without losing its old-growth contract and continuing to supply its two remaining saw mills (which will stay open for three more years).

Logging supporters were aghast when the pulp mill finally closed, taking 500 jobs with it. The Anchorage Daily News opined that KPC's departure would "toss a wrench into the economic works of southeast Alaska." But the region's population is only 73,000, with about 15,000 around Ketchikan, and logging is only 10 percent of its economy. The industry claim that "thousands of jobs will be lost" comes from a Borough of Ketchikan estimate that forest-related employment is 2,879. This number includes industry suppliers and USFS staff, in addition to KPC's 1,000 employees.

The fate of the forest - and logging jobs - will likely be resolved in a continuing battle over a new USFS forest plan for the Tongass. The industry claims that a guaranteed cutting level is necessary to support the local economy. On the other side, environmentalists objected strongly to an early draft of the plan that called for a cut of 300 million board feet over three years. The greens believe that if logging under the contract continues at this level, the grand old forest will be lost, with only remnants left in narrow stream buffers and inaccessible areas.

A Town in the Balance?

I talked with Kathleen McCrossin, a school teacher who has lived in the seaside town of Sitka, on Baranof Island, since 1988, to find out what effect losing the KPC contract might have on the town. In Sitka, the Alaska Pulp Company had a 50-year contract with USFS similar to KPC's. When APC closed its mill in 1993, and USFS announced plans to cancel the contract, McCrossin says, the Sitka town fathers cried that 500 jobs would be lost, property values would plunge, and the town would "fall apart." None of the dire predictions have come true. Sitka's population of 8,500 has remained stable, real estate prices have gone up, and the Sitka Daily Sentinel reported in August 1996 that the building trades were peaking.

Ketchikan is not counting on being so lucky, and, despite a strong summer cruise ship trade, sentiment runs strongly in favor of the KPC contract. So strongly that the Ketchikan Daily News reported that opponents wouldn't talk at public hearings because of "intimidation, fear, and threats of violence." One who testified is tour operator Dale Pihlman. A life-long resident of Ketchikan, Pihlman says there is "a sizable group that doesn't appreciate the amount of timbering going on, but they are afraid to speak out."

Tourism is a growing force in Ketchikan, and tourists and clear-cuts don't mix. Tim Bristol of SEACC says that the only way to end conflicts between the two (and protect the growing eco-tourism, sport fishing and hunting markets) is to reduce the size of the cut. Bristol sees the closing of the KPC plant as "the end of an era," but adds that USFS hasn't gotten the message yet. "Since the plant closed, USFS has released a couple of new sales, and they look disturbingly like the old sales: very expensive, high volume, lots of road building, a big impact on fish and wildlife habitat. We didn't expect them to change overnight, but they better start."

Outside of Ketchikan, support for KPC is less pervasive. Annette Island is a Tsimpshian Indian reservation across the bay from Ketchikan. It is a clean and modern village, with comfortable homes, good schools, no visible poverty, and a strong native identity. A dance troupe we met was a delightful mixture of young and old, alternately poised and playful. In addition to leasing its sawmill to KPC, the tribe has a modern fish processing plant, a commercial smokehouse under construction, and a growing tourist trade. Our friendly and jovial guide, Theo McIntyre, was candid in her opinion of the KPC situation: "I wish them the best, but it really doesn't affect us."

Keeton Gildersleeve offered us a beer as we sat in the comfortable living room of his luxurious two-story floating home. I asked what would happen to his operation, and his 100 employees, if the Forest Service cut back on the old-growth harvest.

"Nothing," .he said. "We'll always have enough to log, and there'll always be a place to sell it. We could live on second growth alone if that's what the public wanted." I asked what percentage of the local loggers had homes and families in southeast Alaska, as opposed to ones that had homes in the lower 48, and just came up here to work. He thought a minute. "I'd say about 25 percent."

Some say KPC's closing has more to do with its own economic problems than with the timber supply. In 1995, KPC paid $6 million in fines and cleanup costs for pollution violations at its pulp mill. State officials say that poisonous sulfur dioxide releases, which sent three workers at a neighboring auto-body repair shop to the hospital in August of 1996, remained "a constant problem" at the aging plant. The company says it would have had to spend $75 million to upgrade its outdated bleaching, water treatment, and effluent discharge systems.

Perhaps the most telling exchange of my visit occurred on the fringe of a clearcut with Gildersleeve foreman Richard Teman. He had been featured in a magazine article down in the Lower 48. "I got a letter from this crazy woman in Oklahoma," he recalled. "She said God would condemn me for my sins of destroying nature. She wrote this on paper, and probably lives in a wood house!" He saw this woman as an incomprehensible fanatic. I imagined that she saw him the same way. "Isn't it beautiful out here?" I asked him. "Yes," Richard answered sincerely. "And there's plenty of these forests all around here. There's enough for everybody."

Setting the Limits

There is a place for logging in the Tongass. Even the Sierra Club, which advocates no logging in public forests, has recognized an exception for the Tongass. Some old-growth must be logged before the Tongass can sustain a timber supply on second growth alone. Where and how much, and whether it is for high volume contracts or small independent mills, is in hot debate; but if each side could see that the other was made of real people and not lunatics, it might help:

Federal law requires that national forests be managed for "multiple uses," including recreation. To many, the most important use of our last great cathedral forests is simply for us to know that they will continue to exist; that we are doing our part to save them so that some day our children can take their grandchildren by the hand, and show them the same trees that we beheld in silence with our grandfathers, in a scene unchanged since before the first human children walked the continent. Sitting in his office in Ketchikan, I asked Jack Phelps where, around here, in the heart of the historic Tongass, I might go to see a grove of the big old ones. He paused, surprised at himself, I think, for not having a ready answer. "I'll get back to you on that," he said.

CONTACT: Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, 419 Sixth Street, #328, Juneau, AL 99801/[phone]; The Wilderness Society, 430 West Seventh Avenue, Suite 210, Anchorage, AL 99501/[phone].

HENRY LEE MORGENSTERN is an attorney and freelance writer based in Alaska and the Florida Keys.