It is ironic and absurd to the point of tears. We are told by the 2016 Tongass National Forest Plan, the Biden administration through Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and, of course, by local and national environmental groups that there can be no timber harvest on 9.4 million acres of inventoried roadless areas in the Tongass. Why? To “protect” fish and wildlife, and to save tourists from seeing clearcuts.
As it turns out, we need to petition the Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Forest Service to act decisively to protect the Tongass from two insects — the hemlock sawfly and the blackheaded budworm — that are working their way through the forest. I first noticed timber turning brown and dying while fishing near Woronkofski Island.
I’ve subsequently learned that the infestation is projected to continue to cause damage to a variety of trees throughout the Tongass this summer. I’ve also learned that last summer’s unusually warm weather fueled an explosion in the western blackheaded budworm, leaving masses of browning trees in many areas of Southeast.
The worm, which is the larval stage of the budworm moth, is known to feed on the new growth of trees, leaving them brownish red in appearance.
Elizabeth Graham, an entomologist for the Forest Service Alaska Region, said the budworms seem to be moving from hemlock to spruce this year. “This is possibly the result of … depleting the resource. There was so much defoliation on hemlock last year … so females may have chosen to lay their eggs on spruce instead, since there’s maybe more of a foliage resource available,” she explained.
Graham said these infestations are a natural part of the changing forest. “They’re basically a cool driver of change, they’re creating gaps in the canopy, adding some more light to the forest floor, adding some more fertilizer to the forest floor. … There are many ways they can be beneficial.”
Graham is “hopeful” the bugs will “go away.” She said, “We’re kind of seeing that since they’re switching over to spruce now, and so they just can’t sustain at these levels. Hopefully, we’re reaching the peak, and that maybe this will be the last year. But we’ll see how it goes and keep monitoring, and eventually it will definitely drop off. They just can’t last that long.”
The bugs give no sign of going away. I am informed that we are in the fifth or sixth year of a hemlock sawfly outbreak, which the blackheaded budworm has now joined.
I call upon Secretary Vilsack, Forest Service Chief Randy Moore, Deputy Chief Chris French and Regional Forester Dave Schmidt to sell and allow cutting timber in danger areas to stop wasting a valuable resource to bug-kill.
I further call upon them that as they inventory old-growth trees this coming year, they include an analysis of all the trees that are at risk in the Tongass from bugs and also the yellow cedar decline. In addition, the inventory must describe how they will deal with these attacks on the healthy part of the Tongass before we end up with another spruce beetle epidemic like the one on the Kenai Peninsula and Interior Alaska.
Finally, I call upon them to implement the Tongass exemption to the roadless rule that the USDA approved in October 2020. The need for access to the Tongass to fight the infestation is painfully obvious as a matter of common sense.
Passively doing nothing while the trees die is not forest management, nor is it “protecting” old growth.
Frank Murkowski served as governor of Alaska 2002-2006, and as U.S. senator for Alaska 1981-2002.
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