Logging on Private Lands Too Much, Too Fast
The best remaining forest stands in the Alaska rainforest are mostly privately owned: about 1.7 million acres. Almost all these lands are in the hands of Alaska Native corporations, established by Congress in 1971 and unique to Alaska. The Native lands were selected from the Tongass and Chugach National Forests, but any operations on these now private lands are exempt from many laws that protect public resources. Though selected only 20 years ago, most of these lands have already been or will soon be clearcut.

Logging on Native lands only began in 1979, but in Southeast Alaska, Native corporations have already logged well over half their timber. In Southeast Alaska, Native corporations were entitled to select approximately 550,000 acres. Approximately 88 percent of lands selected by the corporations held commercial grade timber, mostly old growth. As of 1994, more than 261,000 acres (well over half the commercial timber on Native corporate lands) had already been logged. These lands are widely expected to be depleted within the next decade, leaving a period of at least 60-80 years without potential logging revenue from the land.

In the Prince William Sound and Western Gulf Islands area, there are approximately 1.2 million acres of Native corporation land, including almost all the high value forest and wildlife habitat. In 1989, logging started on these lands, with tens of thousands of acres already cut and the same unsustainable logging rate expected to continue.

Public Welfare and Resources Suffer From Uncontrolled Logging on Private Lands Sustained-yield management is the most rudimentary of protections for the public welfare. It seeks to assure a steady supply of timber over time, rather than allowing a boom-and-bust cycle of management. However, because the Alaska Native corporation lands are privately owned, sustained-yield laws do not apply. As private landowners, the corporations are also not limited in the size of their clearcuts, with the result that entire islands have been shorn of forest in 10-mile long swaths. Native corporation landowners are also only required to leave 66-foot "no-cut" buffers along salmon streams whereas loggers on public lands must leave 100-foot strips. No protection whatsoever is required for wildlife habitat. Logs from private lands are not subject to requirements for local processing. The vast majority of trees cut on Native corporate lands have been exported "in the round," mostly to Japan, where they have received higher prices than those offered by local mills. Half the timber cut in Alaska every year comes from these lands and is almost all exported without any processing. If Alaska processed as much of its timber as states in the Pacific Northwest, this would at least triple the number of timber jobs.

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