66 



amount of wilderness in the region to 

 50 percent, subtracting even more 

 lands from the timber base. 



Historical Perspective 



Natives have inhabited Southeast for 

 several thousand years, and have relied 

 for their subsistence on the same 

 resources used today. The region 

 houses 60.000 Alaskans, whose primary 

 industry employment comes from 

 timber, fishing and tourism. 



The regional economy, until the ar- 

 rival of large-scale timber harvesting. 

 was seasonal and revolved around the 

 ups and downs of fishing cycles. Some 

 years were booms and some were 

 busts. Economies in the winters were 

 slow. Mining flourished in spots, but by 

 World War II had pretty much come to 

 a halt. Sawmills were a small but im- 

 portant part of the economy, while 

 tourism was small-scale. Tourism has 

 grown tremendously in the last decade 

 and mining is expanding. 



The Tongass' timber resource had 

 been evaluated for commercial value 

 for decades. Circulating with this was 

 the idea to build a stable, year-around 

 economy. In the 1940's. Alaskans and 

 the U.S. Forest Service sought out pulp 

 mills, to utilize Southeast timber. 

 Because 47 percent of the timber on 

 commercial forests is not good enough 

 to make lumber, pulp mills could utilize 

 this resource. Several attempts failed. 

 In 1947 Congress passed the Tongass 

 Timber Act which allowed the US. 

 Forest Service to provide pulp com- 

 pany prospects with assurance of raw 

 materials, in return for these com- 

 panies making huge investments in 

 Alaska that would help stabilize the 

 communities. Keep in mind. Alaska 

 was not even a state until 1959. and the 

 realities and uncertainties for making 

 huge investments in a remote territory 

 were large. One contract was signed in 

 1951 with Ketchikan Pulp Corp., a sub- 

 sidiary of Louisiana-Pacific Corp., 

 which constructed a mill in Ketchikan, 

 and in 1957 with Alaska Pulp Corpora- 

 tion, a Japanese-owned firm that built 

 a pulp mill in Sitka and a sawmill in 

 Wrangell. Today, these two firms 

 operate year-around. and are two of the 

 largest three employers in the region. 

 They are the sla'.e's only ycT:r 'round 

 manufacturers. 



These long-term (50-year) contracts, 

 now maligned for being out of date and 

 out of touch with forest management 



practices and slated to be modified in 

 pending legislation, were the incentives 

 to get the mills to invest in Alaska in the 

 first place. They were 50-year timber 

 harvest contracts between the U.S. 

 government and the mills and their 

 cancellations should not be taken light- 

 ly. One governmental accounting agen- 

 cy estimated it could cost the govern- 

 ment up to J150 million should the con- 

 tracts be cancelled. Timber industry 

 officials feel the price tag for tearing 

 up the contracts could be several times 

 that amount, while environmental 

 groups say there will be no cost to the 

 government should the contracts be 

 cancelled. 



"The 50-year contract is like col- 

 lateral to us," said Frank Roppel. ex- 

 ecutive vice president of APC. "That 

 long-term contract is our collateral to 

 make investments in the mill and its 

 collateral to assure our customers they 

 will have a constant supply of our pro- 

 duct." 



Some argue the timber companies 

 were "guaranteed timber for fifty 

 years at sacrificial prices." Not true, 

 says the U.S. Forest Service. The prices 

 paid for timber is based upon the end 

 value of the wood product, minus the 

 cost of preparing the wood. These 

 prices are recalculated every five 

 years. In times of low demand, the end 

 product will be low. The converse is 

 true in times of high demand. The 

 markets, in essence, dictate the prices 

 the timber harvesters pay for wood 

 (stumpage). 



A new. positive factor in the regional 

 economy has been the advent of the 

 Native corporations, for-profit 

 businesses that have extended into log- 

 ging on a big scale. Under land en- 

 titlements from the Alaska Native 

 Claims Settlement Act (1971) they 

 received over 500.000 acres from the 

 Tongass, mostly prime timber lands. 

 During four of the last five years, the 

 harvests on these private timber lands 

 have exceeded those on the national 

 forest. 



"Without logging, a lot of the people 

 in this community and businesses in 

 the area would go belly up." said Gor- 

 don James, a commercial fisherman 

 and a member of the Shaan Seet Cor- 

 poration, the native corporation b::'-<.-d 

 in the Prince of Wales Island town of 

 Craig. I 



"Loggirig has changed our standard ^ 

 of living. To be honest, we're enjoying = 



14 OUR LAND 



