WASHINGTON – A new report from Headwaters Economics, a Bozeman, Mont.-based research firm, finds that the United States Forest Service is continuing to invest at a disproportionate rate into a flagging timber industry in southeast Alaska, while neglecting more sustainable and growing industries like recreation, tourism and fishing.
The Headwaters report, entitled “The Tongass National Forest and the Transition Framework: A New Path Forward,” examines several years of U.S. Forest Service budget and staffing numbers for the Tongass National Forest, America’s largest national forest, as well as the economics of Tongass timber sales.
Its main findings show an agency that has failed to produce any major shifts in budget or staff allocations to support its four-year pledge to end old-growth logging and support key economic sectors in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.
The report finds management of the Tongass National Forest remains
predominantly focused on old-growth harvests, between 34 and 45 percent of its budget. Over the last five years, USFS has spent more of its Tongass budget on
timber than on recreation, watershed
protection, wildlife and fisheries combined.
In 2010, the Forest Service promised to prioritize job creation and diversify the economies of Southeast communities by investing in fisheries, tourism, forest restoration and renewable energy, while simultaneously protecting important landscapes. The agency announced a “framework” that would transition its timber program from one dominated by old-growth logging to one based on young-growth forest products.
Today, Headwaters Economics has found that this transition has failed to take root. Since its announcement, the Forest Service has continued to invest disproportionately in old-growth timber development rather than more economically important industries. This is not only a huge opportunity cost for the region, it actually means federal taxpayers have been paying more than $20 million annually to support barely more than 100 private sector jobs.
Statements on Findings of Headwaters Economics Report:
“That we’ve been discussing this pledge to transition out of Tongass old-growth for more than four years now without any progress is simply mind-boggling. This is quickly becoming the ‘transition to nowhere,’ and it will stay that way as long as the Forest Service remains intent on propping up the timber industry at the expense of all others in southeast Alaska,” said Kristen Miller, conservation director at Alaska Wilderness League.
“Continuing to subsidize old-growth timber could cost taxpayers, the Tongass, and the thriving industries in Southeast that rely on it the opportunity for a more prosperous future,” she writes.
“The Forest Service needs to step into the 21st century in the Tongass. A transition away from old-growth logging to supporting thriving industries such as fishing and tourism would strengthen both Southeast Alaska’s economy and the wildlife and salmon that support the biggest parts of that economy,” said Jim Adams, policy director at Audubon Alaska.
The research of Headwaters Economics is peer-reviewed and independent, receiving funding from a variety of sources as part of its mission to pursue a broad range of research to help improve community development and land management decisions in the West. Its reports are published in scientific journals such as the Journal of Forestry, Journal of Rural Studies, Society and Natural Resources, Growth and Change, and Human Ecology Review.
Funding for Headwaters Economics comes from numerous places: federal agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service; public partnerships including the Montana Legislature and Madison County, Montana; development organizations such as Economic Development Central Oregon and Visit Bend; private foundations such as The Kendeda Fund and M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust; and contract work for non-profit organizations such as the Trust for Public Land. The complete report is available online at http:// headwaterseconomics.org/land/ reports/ tongass.
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