![]() The Juneau Empire recently published a guest editorial on the Big Thorne timber sale on Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. The controversial old-growth sale is on hold pending a review of how the proposed logging would potentially impact wolf, deer and bear populations on the island. Big Thorne is the largest timber sale on the Tongass since the era of industrial logging on the Tongass when two large pulp mills and several medium-sized sawmills operated in Southeast Alaska. Most of the mills closed in the 1990s and the U.S. Forest Service, which largely manages the 17-million-acre Tongass, has pledged to transition away from old-growth logging. But it’s been slow in doing so. The Big Thorne sale would produce up to 150 million board feet of timber. It would involve logging more than 6,000 acres of old growth and more than 2,000 acres of second-growth forest in a part of the Tongass that has already experienced heavy timber harvest. Big Thorne has been criticized by conservation, fishing and sportsmens groups, including Trout Unlimited. ”Big Thorne, as it stands now, is a huge step backwards for the Tongass. Southeast Alaska’s economy revolves around fishing and tourism and this large timber sale directly threatens the jobs and revenue those industries produce. It makes no sense from an economic or ecological standpoint,” said Austin Williams, Trout Unlimited’s Forest Program Manager. Read the Empire editorial by Emily Mount, a naturalist for Lindblad Expeditions/National Geographic and former Glacier Bay National Park ranger. ![]() By David Clark and Brad Elfers Sen. Mark Begich is in town this weekend, and we hope he’s reading the Juneau Empire. Fishermen have a lot at stake in Southeast Alaska, and growing numbers of us are greatly concerned about mining activity on the Canadian side of the border, upstream of our major fisheries. Southeast is among the world’s best places for fishing, whether sport, commercial, subsistence or personal use. The fish we target are healthy, abundant and within close reach. The 17 million-acre Tongass National Forest is a rugged nursery that sustains our fisheries, and for the third year in a row Southeast has been Alaska’s most lucrative region for commercial salmon fishing. On an annual basis, salmon contribute about $1 billion to the local economy and provide jobs for over 7,000 people, with sport, charter and personal use fishing accounting for about a third of the dollar value and employment. In 2013, the Southeast commercial harvest exceeded 100 million salmon for the first time, and the catch value was nearly $220 million at the docks. As you can see, we have a lot to lose from ill effects of upstream activity in northern British Columbia. We need our Congressional delegates to engage on this issue. Construction of the Northwest Transmission Line has enabled a dozen or so industrial-sized mining projects to move forward in the headwaters of major salmon-producing rivers that flow into Southeast Alaska. These developments are located on transboundary rivers that we depend upon for salmon. These Canadian mines would employ few, if any, Alaskans and have the potential to degrade the water quality and spawning habitat of these rivers. Here is a glimpse of the cross-border activity our waterways would be subjected to: • The proposed Kerr-Sulphurets-Mitchell (KSM) gold-copper mine located in the headwaters of the Unuk River which flows into Southeast Alaska’s Misty Fjords National Monument. This mine plan calls for three large open pits, an underground mine, an enormous tailings dump and large waste rock containments that will fill two valleys and contain billions of tons of acid-generating rock. • The reopening of the Tulsequah Chief mine, located on the Tulsequah River just upstream of its confluence with the Taku River. The Taku is Southeast Alaska’s biggest salmon producer. • The proposed Galore Creek mine, located on Galore Creek, which flows into the Scud River, a salmon-producing tributary of the Stikine River. Emptying out at Wrangell, the Stikine is a huge salmon-producing river for Alaskans. Tailings from Galore Creek would be submerged in Round Lake, which drains into the Iskut River, the Stikine’s major tributary. • The proposed Schaft Creek mine located between Schaft Creek and Mess Creek, a tributary of the Stikine River. Mining the deposit would generate 100 million tons of waste rock in an area with extremely high seasonal water flow. • The Red Chris mine near the headwater lakes of the Iskut River. Several hundred million tons of tailings and waste rock would be submerged in Black Lake, which drains into the Iskut River. Each of these developments has the potential to release acid mine drainage, which can kill fish. At this point, there is little dialogue occurring between Canada and the United States, there is little policy in place to protect Alaskan waters and we are not being consulted as these B.C. mines move forward. We look to our elected leaders to use their leverage and negotiate protections for our livelihoods and the cornerstone of our economy. Our Alaska congressional delegation has a critical role to play in this matter and we need Sen. Begich, Sen. Murkowski and Rep. Young to raise the alarm with the U.S. State Department. High-level officials need to initiate talks with Canada and use whatever means possible to ensure Alaska’s interests are protected. Canadian concerns end at the border, but the rivers know no borders and neither do the fish. If you value fish, please help spread the word and urge our congressional delegates to take action. This guest editorial originally appeared in the Juneau Empire on March 2, 2014. David Clark lives in Juneau, is the founder of the Commercial Fishing Film Festival and has commercially fished in Southeast Alaska for 17 years. Brad Elfers has owned Alaska Fly Fishing Goods in Juneau for over 15 years ![]() Alaska is a place that is ruled by seasons and cycles that get fairly predictable after you go through them a few times. We harvest fish, berries and our gardens in the summer, hunt and chop wood in the fall, do various forms of sledding or skiing, take vacations or hibernate in the winter and get ready to do it all over again the spring. Alaska is also comprised of mostly federal land, some 219,000,000 acres or almost 70 percent of its total land area. Many of these lands are iconic places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Denali National Park and the Tongass National Forest—places well known as national treasures. What is likely far less known outside of Alaska is how frequently Alaskan politicians attempt to raid these treasures. I haven’t kept track of the actual number myself but it seems a plan to do just that gets hatched about every two years up here. The genesis of these plans follows a predictable cycle of its own. Even though Alaska receives more federal dollars per capita than any other state, many Alaska politicians get elected on platforms that include loud but vague anti-federal agendas— like “Keep the feds out!” or “Let Alaskans run Alaska!” Next they add in some unsustainable resource extraction, like what went on during almost 50 years of industrial-scale logging on the Tongass, leaving a private industry in a quandary as to its next move. Then some politician, full of anti-fed rhetoric, will typically swoop in with a proposal to rescue the failed industry by proposing to take federal lands from those nasty people in Washington D.C. (and all us taxpayers) and put them under state ownership, thereby righting the injustice, oppression and tyranny the mere existence of federal lands represents to all true Alaskans. There’s usually a day or two of factional chest-pounding when these resolutions get introduced in our legislature but that fades quickly as folks remember it’s really up to the U.S. Congress to decide how to manage federal public lands. State Senator Bert Stedman (R-Sitka) probably knows that as well as anyone but it hasn’t stopped him from recently introducing Senate Concurrent Resolution 2 which calls for the transfer of Tongass National Forest lands to the State of Alaska so they can be logged by private companies. The days are finally starting to get noticeably longer up here now and yet another federal land grab has been proposed in our legislature. Alaska’s seasons and cycles continue but some cycles are best recognized for what they are: silly ideas that may score the odd political point up here but will go nowhere in Congress. Read a media story about Sen. Stedman’s resolution. ![]() Of all the salmon species in Alaska, the king salmon is the most highly regarded. Folks come to Alaska from all over the world for a chance to catch a king on sport tackle, and every year the Southeast commercial troll fleet gears up for the short but intense opener to harvest these valuable fish. The largest of the Pacific salmon, the king attained historical weights approaching triple figures and is considered the sport angler’s prize fish, renowned for its fighting ability and unsurpassed as table fare. For the commercial fisherman, they represent the most value-per-pound of all the Pacific salmon and the fish most folks identify as the symbol of Alaska’s commercial fisheries. The least populous of all the salmon species in Alaska, the king is now facing troubling times as statewide productivity is decreasing and opportunities for both sport and commercial catch of kings are being restricted. King salmon have very specific spawning requirements, and they favor larger, deeper rivers with large gravel and consistent winter flows. Since most of the rivers and streams in Southeast Alaska are relatively small and fairly short, kings are found in only a handful of the larger rivers, most of them on the mainland coast. The bulk of the Southeast Alaska king salmon population spawns in 4 large trans-boundary rivers – the Taku, Stikine, Alsek, and Unuk rivers. These rivers have a total annual run of about 140,000 king salmon, or about 80% of all the spawning kings in Southeast Alaska, and have shown disturbing downward population trends for the past decade or so for reasons unknown. “Patterns of Chinook salmon productivity and abundance generally have varied over time and among different areas of Alaska. However, recent declines in productivity, abundance, and inshore harvests appear widespread and persistent throughout Alaska.” (Chinook Salmon Stock Assessment Plan, 2013, ADF&G) As if this observation from ADF&G wasn’t enough, the state fish of Alaska is now facing yet another threat in the form of ramped-up mining activity in the trans-boundary watershed basins of Southeast Alaska. A major mining boom in northwest British Columbia (B.C.), combined with B.C.’s reduced environmental safeguards and a lack of engagement from the U.S. and Alaska, poses significant risks to downstream fisheries, water quality and livelihoods in Southeast Alaska. This development is occurring under permitting processes and environmental regulations less rigorous than those in the U.S., and has the potential to negatively impact the spawning and rearing habitat of these major king salmon producing systems. The US and the state of Alaska have spent several decades and millions upon millions of dollars to responsibly manage and conserve king salmon populations in Southeast Alaska, and will no doubt be spending millions more in the coming years in an attempt to gain a better understanding of the factors that affect king salmon productivity. The potential negative impacts of loosely regulated mining activity on the trans-boundary watersheds of Southeast Alaska could negate these years of work and millions of dollars spent – do we really want to take that chance? Can we afford to lose the king salmon economy of Southeast Alaska? The America’s Salmon Forest Coalition along with Rivers Without Borders and several sport and commercial fishing organizations are asking Senators Lisa Murkowski and Mark Begich and Representative Don Young to request that the State Department engage with Canadian officials on this matter. It is critical to ensure that salmon habitat and communities in Southeast Alaska downstream from large B.C. mines do not suffer the ill effects of mine pollution entering trans-boundary waterways. As the kings that spawn in Southeast Alaska’s trans-boundary watersheds make their way in from the ocean, they provide harvest opportunities all along their migration routes for sport and commercial use alike. With the future of Alaska king salmon growing more uncertain every year, we can ill afford to lose the limited opportunities that we currently have. If you would like to add your voice to the growing number of folks asking for the guidance and leadership of our Alaska legislators, visit www.salmonbeyondborders.org and sign the online petition. ![]() Sen. Lisa Murkowski lambasted the head the U.S. Forest Service, Tom Tidwell, today during an oversight hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Her chief complaint, as usual, is what she perceives as a lack of old-growth logging in the Tongass National Forest, Alaska’s 17-million-acre temperate rainforest, a place that produces tens of millions of wild salmon and trout every year. “Providing the Forest Service with a clear timber harvest management mandate is a key part of getting us back on track,” Murkowski said. “In Alaska, we need to do more because the reinstatement of the roadless rule is crippling our communities in Southeast. I believe we need to repeal the rule, but at the very least the Forest Service must provide flexibility in how it applies the rule in the Tongass.” She was referring to a 2013 court decision allowing a Clinton administration-era regulation restricting road building in roadless parts of national forests to be applied to the Tongass. The Southeast Alaska forest – the country’s largest national forest and its biggest producer of wild salmon — had previously been exempted. The roadless rule protects intact fish and wildlife habitat. The Forest Service has announced plans to transition away from logging old growth and is developing plans to cut second-growth timber. “Second growth timber is accessible from existing roads in areas not covered by the roadless rule so it’s peculiar that the senator would see repealing the rule as a necessity,” said Austin Williams, TU’s Alaska Forest Program Director. Williams went on to say Murkowski’s remarks about Southeast Alaska’s economic condition belie realities on the ground. He cited, among other things, a report last summer by the Southeast Conference, a business trade group based in Juneau, indicating that Southeast Alaska has more residents – and more jobs – than ever before and that the region has recovered from the 1990’s logging industry crash. The Southeast Conference noted that nearly every single economic indicator in the region is up and continuing to rise. “The Southeast Alaska economy is now in a cycle of growth and is stronger than ever,” Meilani Schijvens, the report’s main author, told CoastAlaska public radio. Rather than pushing for more logging, Murkowski should be encouraging the Forest Service to invest more in Southeast Alaska’s key industries – fishing and tourism, Williams said. |
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