The borough owns about 12,000 acres on Wrangell Island and wants to work with two different state agencies that hold several thousand acres more to see if they can coordinate small-scale timber sales on the island.
“By pooling our resources … we put ourselves in a better position,” Borough Manager Mason Villarma said.
The borough assembly last month approved a memorandum of understanding to work with the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority, which owns a little over 4,000 acres across the island. The agreement calls for working together toward possible timber sales and residential subdivisions.
The Legislature created the mental health trust 30 years ago and endowed it with 1 million acres of land across the state to generate revenue for Alaskans “who experience mental illness, intellectual and developmental disabilities, substance-use disorders, Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia and traumatic brain injuries,” according to its website.
The Trust last year granted about $25 million to nonprofits, municipal, state and tribal programs around Alaska.
The Trust owns acreage on the uphill side of Zimovia Highway from just past City Park out past Shoemaker Bay and as far south as Pats Creek; land fronting on Ishiyama Drive; and several parcels on the east side of the island, facing the Back Channel.
It owns quite a few large tracts around Southcentral and northern Alaska as well as Southeast.
The Trust signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the borough on Friday, Jan. 17, said Jussdi Warner, executive director of the trust’s land office.
“The overall goal for the MOU is to get moving in the same direction,” she said.
The agreement calls for establishing a steering committee for joint planning and to “collaborate on feasibility studies and development projects with defined cost sharing.”
Before making any decisions on its lands, the Trust would need to get a forester on the ground to look at the potential value of timber stands, Warner said. Whether to develop a residential subdivision would depend on community needs and the return on investment including development costs.
“We’re always looking to maximize revenue for the Trust,” she said.
Partnering with the borough for timber sales on neighboring land could make sense, Warner said. “Any contractor would be looking at more timber” to improve the economics of a logging sale, particularly to spread out their mobilization costs over a larger harvest.
The Trust Authority already owns acreage at Pats Landing that serves as a transfer site to put logs into the water for towing, Villarma said. “The nice thing of pooling our lands together is the cost share.”
Separate from any timber sales, the agency has a long record of making land available for residential and recreational use. It has an 8.24-acre parcel above Shoemaker Bay for sale on its over-the-counter land sale website, along with two smaller parcels (under 2 acres each) on the east side of the island. It plans to list six more lots on the east side this week.
The borough is also looking to team up with a second state agency — the Department of Natural Resources — which is considering a timber sale on the Back Channel as part of its five year, 2026-2030 plan.
Penciled in for 2026-2027 is 160 acres of old-growth timber at Earl West Cove, totaling about 3 million board feet, according to the department’s public notice of the planning effort.
If all 3 million board feet went to dimensional lumber, it could be enough wood to frame a couple hundred 2,000-square-foot homes, according to a federal chart.
“The operability of the area is considered marginal due to mobilization costs and because the stand is predominantly a hemlock-dominant forest type,” according to the department’s planning document. “Recent demand for larger hemlock has made the area of interest to timber purchasers and may provide opportunity to expand the footprint previously identified.”
“Some operators have been asking about it,” Greg Staunton, the state’s Southeast area forester, said of the possible Earl West Cove timber sale.
He noted that the proposed five-year plan is a list of potential sales, not a definite timeline.
The area is accessible from existing U.S. Forest Service roads but would require about a mile of new road and half a mile of road reconstruction.
The borough is working to take ownership of the land between the state acreage at Earl West and the water as part of its lands entitlement, which could provide an opportunity for a municipal timber sale at the same time as the state sale.
“Of course, that’s not all marketable timber,” Villarma said, adding that he envisions small-scale sales that could be attractive to local operators.
This year’s borough budget includes $150,000 for timber survey work to help determine the potential value of trees in the area. Villarma said he hopes that the state and borough can get together on that analysis work at Earl West Cove.
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