The community of Tok, deep in Interior Alaska, became a hub of forestry expertise this week, as professionals from across the state convened for the three-day annual meeting of the Alaska Society of American Foresters.
Organized by the Tanana chapter under Chairman Jeremy Douse, the gathering featured more than a dozen insightful presentations covering the latest updates in forestry management and Alaska Division of Forestry operations.
Attendees praised the line-up of speakers, noting that every presentation was “timely, succinct, and enlightening,” reflecting a growing urgency in addressing the complex issues facing Alaska’s forests and fire suppression strategies.
Two major topics dominated the meeting: Timber carbon credits and fires started in urban encampments
Timber carbon credits and Senate Bill 48
If Alaska sells timber off as carbon credits and the forests burn, does Alaska have to give the money back to the purchaser of the credits? Does this liability stretch to the life of the carbon credits when the cash is paid up front? It’s a question that is being asked as the state moves into the global carbon credit business, and the foresters attending the meeting discussed it at length.
The rapidly evolving field of timber carbon credits and implications of Senate Bill 48, signed into law in Alaska in 2023, which laid the foundation for the state’s entry into the carbon credit market, is an arcane, but important topic. Key updates highlighted the continued significance of Alaska-based sales, including the Chugach Alaska Corporation’s transaction, currently the largest known sale in North America, and Sealaska’s sale, the second largest.
Alaska’s Department of Natural Resources is expected to open a public comment period in early 2026 regarding its carbon credit sales strategy. Meanwhile, Doyon, Limited is emerging as another major player exploring this industry.
However, challenges remain. Who is responsible for fire suppression on carbon credit land? Who is responsible for fire suppression for carbon credit land owned by Native corporations?
If a private company is paid today for promising to not log specific land for 40 years, or 100 years, and that land is now designated as not eligible for fire suppression (called “limited”), does the private company pick up the suppression costs?
The concepts of fire suppression costs on lands enrolled in credit programs are emerging as potentially costly and complicated issues. Notably, there is currently no compliance carbon market — either voluntary or regulatory — for lands north of the Alaska Range.
Only Michigan, to date, has sold carbon credits as a state government entity, placing them into the voluntary market, which has recently softened significantly. While the market has gone flat, Alaska even has not gone through the public comment period.
New fire suppression threats from urban encampments
A second pressing issue brought forth during the meeting was the unprecedented wildfire risk posed by homeless encampments, particularly in Anchorage.
Speakers emphasized that such encampments represent a new and unpredictable fire threat that defies the typical patterns of Alaska wildfires.
While it remains impossible to predict the severity of a fire season in advance, experts warned that fires originating in homeless shantytowns could blur the line between urban fires and traditional wildfires. Because these encampments often involve flammable structures, outdoor fires, use of gasoline or other propellents as starter, and because they exist outside standard regulatory frameworks, the threat to surrounding areas during periods of low humidity and high winds is especially serious. This year, the wildfire season in Anchorage started early, due to low snowfall over the winter.
Forest fire managers may need the state to communicate clearly with municipal governments to let them know that local resources would be on the hook for suppression costs when fires start within city limits and then spread outside the city limits.
Current agreements used annually to allocate suppression costs — especially involving federal partners like the Departments of Interior and Agriculture — default to state payment through disaster declarations unless otherwise specified.
Redundancy in having the Alaska Departments of Law, and Natural Resources, and the 34th Alaska Legislature alert at least the Municipality of Anchorage of a potentially costly conflagration is one recommendation. The 1994 Miller’s Reach II Fire, in Big Lake cost about $50 million ($170 million in 2025 dollars) and was likely started by fireworks (as the Miller’s Reach I fire, a few days earlier was). It destroyed 344 structures in addition to the basic suppression costs.
With wildfire suppression costs having risen exponentially since the 1990s, attendees were reminded that suppression costs are just part of the picture. The damage to property and structures adds another layer of financial strain. A single wildfire ignited in a homeless encampment could require at least tens of millions of dollars to extinguish—underscoring the need for proactive planning and clear financial policies. In recent years a $60 million Alaska fire year is a larger year, but the homeless encampment situation might bring Alaska its first $100 million year.
Why is the “State” involved with global climate credits? Did anything ever come of the University of Fairbanks group that was going to climb Mt. Mckinley to get snow samples to see what type of pollution of coming from our atmosphere? As far a “Global Climate Credits” does the upper atmospheric seeding have anything to do with these “climate credits? What type of science is involved with monitoring seed germination with countries that are involved in increasing climate credits? Just asking.
Carbon credits seem like either extortion, a scam, money laundering, or all of it wrapped into one. Will members of the petroleum industry be forced to buy credits? Will buying credits allow one to pollute? Who monitors all this and follows the money trail? I don’t feel safeguards are in place along with the above question of what happens when the forest is gone.
As long as the selling of carbon credits is bound by a force majeur clause then the real question becomes can you start over and sell the new forest that will grow capturing more carbon (and cash) than the forest that burned.
Carbon credits = An enormous scam that does nothing to make people’s life any better. A side effect is the confusing articles that are written about it (like this one).
The concept behind issuing carbon credits to timber owners who commit contractually to certain management strategies for their timber and are then able receive and monetize these credits is that healthy trees sequester carbon by intaking CO2. The amount of carbon sequestered is quantifiable. The key is healthy trees. Verifying entities do field work to verify stand health, volume and risk. Offsets (discounts) are used to account for risk from fire and disease. Periodic inspections for loss through mortality and measurement of growth is part of the contract. There are several approaches to issuing timber carbon credits. Some contracts call for a total lock up (no harvest) of the timber, often for 100 years or more while other approaches pay for the carbon sequestered by improved forest management, which may involve thinning, scarification to enhance regeneration and planting. The carbon sequestered through the incremental improvement in the growth of the timber is measured and credits, which may be monetized, are issued by verifiers. Getting credits from dead and dying timber is difficult. There is one way, but it involves actually removing and sequestering the dead trees a challenge for the situation in south central Alaska, where millions of white spruce trees are dead or dying.
Carbon credits of any kind are a huge scam. Sales of timber carbon credits is not an “industry”. If it were an industry, it would actually produce something. It doesn’t. That our Governor, some members of our legislature, our DNR and our foresters are gullible enough to buy into this huge lie is almost unbelievable. Or, maybe they realize it’s a scam, but are just willing to stoop that low to grub for cash. Either way, it’s pathetic.
If I rent your forest for a carbon sink, and you let it burn or be killed by insects, I will expect my money to be returned. See what a stupid idea carbon credits are yet? Try to THINK, try to FOCUS, like a laser beam.
Actually, the way fire risk is accounted for is that the credits are discounted on the front end, so the generator of the credits, the timber owner, only receives a portion of the “value” of the amount of carbon sequestered. It can amount to a significant reduction to the check the timber owner receives when the credits are sold.
Well, at least the term “value” is correctly set off by quotation marks….
Carbon credits are a scam
The Muni is spending a lot of money to cut a large firebreak near the science center.
When asked what the muni’s biggest source of fire ignition source was, the answer was “humans”.
But when pressed on illegal homeless camp fires that are so prevalent these days, AFD kicked the response to APD… “we do not enforce laws. That is up to APD and the Prosecutors office.”
No one gets cited. Taxpayers pay. Forests burn. No responsibility.
Until its too late. And a firebreak wont stop a fire that is on and inside the urban wildland interface.
Every time I read the phrase “carbon credits”, I instantly think of Bitcoin, Nigerian princes, the South Sea Bubble, 17th century tulip bulbs, and other such fads and scams.
Selling carbon credits on acreage that can/will never reasonably be developed is dishonest on both the part of the seller and the buyer.
Carbon credit’s just a side-hustle, a distraction, no one outside The Club will see a dime from that shell game.
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But the bum camps are still there, they’re gonna stay there and grow, so why don’t we ask the quiet part out loud?
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If a single wildfire ignited in a homeless encampment could require at least tens of millions of dollars to extinguish, if the homeless encampment situation brings Alaska its first $100 million year, could it be that city officials are deliberately allowing bum camps to proliferate so
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residents can be scared into passing huge fire-related bonds,
residents can be scared into passing huge AWWU expansion bonds.
residents can be scared into passing huge road-construction bonds,
residents can be scared into passing huge school fire-proofing bonds,
residents can be scared into passing some sort of fire-proof bum-housing program,
residents can be scared into accepting curfews and martial law,
the corrupted election system assures productive residents can be taxed into paying for forest fires,
federal and state governments can be swindled out of massive grants for fire protection,
massive sole-source, emergency contracts can be awarded for the first five things,
money taken for huge fire-related bonds and grants can be laundered into other enterprises, and
properties can be burned out, condemned, seized by the city to build tiny, public housing?
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What good, wholesome, honest things come from the Assembly and Mayor to convince us profiteering from fires would never happen, like it seems to happen with homeless housing, school-board contracts over a million dollars, and sole-source contracts?
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Remember we’re talking a hundred mil, who in this city government wouldn’t want a piece of that?
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Are we willing to risk our very own bum-started meth-lab fueled Palisades Fire to find out?
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Official policy apparently allows proven fire hazards, to proliferate undisturbed by city safety officials until bum-started fires grow to a size that officials can’t ignore.
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So, it seems reasonable to expect residents will advise Assembly members, mayor, city safety officials, city insurors, and municipal bondholders that a city-sanctioned, bum-started Palisades Fire will be taken rather poorly by property owners who’ve survived, up to that point, everything an openly hostile Assembly and a hood-ornament mayor can throw at them and their children, no?
The flora and fauna of the interior of Alaska depends on periodic wildfires.
Black Spruce must burn every 100 years or so, to commence the cycle of various grasses, willows, poplar, birch and ultimately again spruce.
The complex quilt of mixed vegetation bands is essential for the cyclic high and low populations for all our animal and bird species.
The concept of sequestering patches of forest as carbon capture zones, further defined by ownership grids, is the definition of incompetent stupidity.
The fact our state forestry is wasting time on this nonesense indicates the entire management needs to be replaced with cogent individuals.
The carbon capture scam itself is nonesense. It’s just another scheme to create artificial wealth for hedge funds, divorced from real economic activity.