The state is working toward a possible timber sale at Earl West Cove in 2025 or 2026, with the borough hoping it could piggyback on the effort and put up its own acreage in the area to increase the logging work and generate revenue for the municipality.
A state timber sale of approximately 160 acres is part of the state’s five-year plan covering 2023-2027.
But there is work to do before the state timber could go out for bid.
The Department of Natural Resources, Division of Forestry and Fire Protection hired a consultant two or three years ago to provide an opinion of the marketable timber at Earl West Cove, said Greg Staunton, Southeast area forester, based in Ketchikan.
The next step for the division will be to get on the ground to look at details of a possible layout and roads needed for the timber sale, “and what the cuts might look like,” Staunton said in a recent interview.
He hopes a crew can spend time in the field this summer.
Earl West is about halfway down the eastern side of Wrangell Island, facing the Back Channel,
Making money on a timber sale there could be a challenge for a buyer.
“The operability of the area is considered marginal because the stand is predominately a hemlock-dominant forest type, and also due to mobilization costs,” according to the state’s five-year plan. “Approximately 1 mile of new road construction has been identified, along with 0.5 mile of light road reconstruction.”
Existing Forest Service roads provide access to the area.
The division identified Earl West Cove “a number of years ago” as a candidate for a timber sale, Staunton said.
“We have heightened interest in what we’re doing because the federal government isn’t doing timber sales anymore.”
After field work and mapping, the department would need to issue a best-interest finding as the last step before putting the timber out for bid, maybe in 2025 or 2026. That would allow time for the state to work with the public on setting conditions for the sale, the area forester said.
The state sale is proposed at 3 million board feet of timber, which, if it all went to dimensional lumber, could be enough wood to frame a couple hundred 2,000-square-foot homes, according to a federal chart.
The Tyee Lake hydroelectric power transmission line cuts across the acreage, and fish streams meander through the state lands and the nearby acreage the borough has selected.
Though the vast majority of Southeast Alaska is under federal ownership as part of the Tongass National Forest, the state holds land on Wrangell Island at Pats Creek and along the Eastern Passage (Back Channel), in addition to Earl West Cove, Staunton explained.
The most recent state timber sale on the island closed out about a dozen years ago, he said, with the timber going to Viking Lumber.
The state land at Earl West has no access to the water. The borough is working to take ownership of the land between the state acreage and the water as part of its lands entitlement, which could provide an opportunity for a municipal timber sale, according to borough officials.
Interim Borough Manager Mason Villarma has talked of possibly partnering with the state for a timber sale from municipal lands at the same time as the Earl West Cove acreage goes to bid.
The proposed state timber sale acreage is north of the Forest Service’s Earl West Cove campsite, which people can reach by water or a 28-mile drive from Wrangell across old logging roads.
The camping and picnic area is within the acreage the borough has selected for its municipal lands.
After the borough was created in 2008 — expanding from its status as a city — Wrangell exercised its land entitlement rights and selected about 9,000 acres of state lands. Of those, it has received the patent on some but not all of the acreage. Earl West Cove is one of the selections not yet turned over to the borough, Villarma said.
Other borough selections are on Zarembo Island, at Sunny Bay south of Deer Island, Olive Cove on Etolin Island, Crittenden Creek and Mill Creek on the mainland, Thoms Place on Wrangell Island, and three other blocks on Wrangell Island.
All of the land has been surveyed and the Department of Natural Resources has approved the selections, Villarma said, with the borough just waiting on the official transfer.
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