Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was perhaps the last of the great pianist-composers whose line stretched back to Mozart and Beethoven. The kind of musician whose craft demanded instruments of commensurate quality, the world’s finest pianos: Steinway & Sons. Rachmaninoff called them “perfect in every way.” Part of that perfection was owed to the uniquely excellent acoustic qualities of the Sitka spruce used to build the soundboards.
But not just any tree will do. To achieve its trademark warm, rich tone, Steinway requires spruce sourced from Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, which is today supplied exclusively by Viking Lumber. Located on Prince of Wales Island, it is one of the last sawmills standing in the state and the only one in the U.S. capable of meeting Steinway’s needs.
Now, Viking is threatened with extinction by the caprice of the U.S. Forest and Wildlife Service. In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska, the sawmill’s attorneys stated that “decades of federal overreach, broken promises, and dereliction of statutorily mandated duties by executive branch agencies have slowly decimated this once thriving industry—jobs continue to evaporate, and many livelihoods have been lost.”
Filed on March 6, the lawsuit against the Forest Service also names the Alaska Forest Association and Alcan Timber as plaintiffs. They are being represented pro bono by Pacific Legal Foundation.
Viking employs 46 people year-round in a small, isolated community, but the ripples of its influence and operations reach much further than that. Everything from helicopter blades to garage doors and the wind tunnels used by our nation’s space agency is made with the lumber it sources in Southeast Alaska. There are hundreds of people—contractors, union workers, storefront businesses—across the country who depend on the sawmill.
In 2016, the US Department of Agriculture enacted a management policy to transition from sales of old- to young-growth timber while promising the availability of a certain amount of old-growth timber from the Tongass on a fixed, annual schedule. The plan was to gradually shift to young-growth timber without inadvertently wiping out an entire industry in Southeast Alaska.
But the Forest Service never kept its promise. According to the complaint, the federal government “ended the harvest of old-growth timber promised in the plan unilaterally—through guidance—without going through proper rulemaking channels.”
“The USDA and the Forest Service have not fulfilled their obligations under either the TTRA” or the 2016 management plan, the complaint states.
The Alaskan timber industry has been the product of compromise for decades. The Forest Service manages the Tongass under rules established by Congress in the Tongass Timber Reform Act. Passed in 1990, it sought to balance meeting market demand for timber with protecting the forest. Notably, the March complaint also states that old-growth timber has “not been offered to a degree” that would meet either the 2016 management plan schedule or the TTRA’s market demand requirement. As a result, the industry has slowly been whittled away.
In 1991, approximately 3,500 people were employed by the Alaskan timber industry. Today, that number has plummeted by 90%.
Viking came to Alaska on a gamble. “I moved my family, sight unseen, in June of ’94,” Kirk Dahlstrom, the general manager of the sawmill’s operations, told Must Read Alaska.
Originally operating in Washington, he made the jump north when the government’s efforts to protect wildlife squeezed the family timber business. Dahlstrom saw a bankrupt sawmill in Alaska and rolled the dice.
Their initial Sitka spruce harvests went primarily to Kawai Musical Instruments in Japan, which, like Steinway & Sons, produces some of the finest pianos in the world. Viking almost immediately struck gold. The gamble paid off.
“In 2016, we became the sole supplier for Steinway,” Dahlstrom said.
That was, of course, the same year the Department of Agriculture decided to enact the new management policy that it never honored. Dahlstrom believes that the agency has been captured over the years by people who go too far in the direction of conservation. Only a fraction of the Tongass is made available for timber management, and Viking harvests a small portion of that each year. The industry that employs Alaskans is at far greater risk than the forest it relies upon.
Fortunately, Viking also entered into negotiations with the Alaska Mental Health Trust in 2016. The Trust Land Office negotiated a 100-million board-foot timber sale with the company, which has helped Viking weather the storm.
But the contract will be completed this year. When that happens, it will put the Dahlstrom family business and all the people employed by it on the brink of disaster.
“We are getting awfully low,” Dahlstrom said.
He praised the state for trying to provide a measure of relief by putting together a “rich timber program.” It will buy them another year at most.
“And then, we’ll be out.”
Dahlstrom is holding out hope that the Forest Service will start producing sales before it is too late. It is another gamble he is being forced to make.
What Dahlstrom and other Alaskans are asking for is for the Forest Service to honor its end of the bargain and not circumvent Congress. All it would take is a change of tune from the new administration.
The US Forest Service is and always has been incompetent and two-faced. You’d think that, by now, people would know that and not let their expectations get too high when dealing with USFS.
National forests were created to ensure the availability of forest products for future Americans. National parks were created to natural scenery for man to enjoy. The two shouldn’t be conflated.
Does anyone remember going to Seward with the boat for the week & running down to portage glacier & Getting all the free ice in the world I remember when portage & exit glaciers rocked. I remember our bus stops in the winter time being heated & all seemed to care. Of FATHER look at what the ones who swear to FATHER have done to our state?? Oath takers dem or republican look how you bamboozled our state away, an oath to GOD matters first & foremost TO ALL, so help dem all for they know what they do a-men oath breakers SUCK!!!
These are wonderful hard working people doing a very professional job of running this vital business. Make your voice of support heard wherever you can.
We do not have competent forest management at federal or state levels.
The truly renewable forest resources are mismanaged and wasted. Balancing maximum economic benefits with healthy forests and critical wildlife habitat is complex, but feasible.
Eliminating access to old growth Sitka Spruce is as imbecilic as setting aside interior forests for carbon schemes.
Our state government mentality is as degraded as the federal government mentality.
Timber harvesting and saw mill jobs are actually productive and produce essential materials. Unlike utterly useless government positions staffed by union stiffs, dependent on government spending. The only difference between welfare recipients and most government workers is the scale at which their costs accumulate on the national debt.
This is by design. The Globalists use Climate Change cultists and various “foundations” as foot soldiers to decimate our domestic production of just about everything. This same story can be applied to our fishing industries as well. The goal is near 100% importation of materials needed for our survival so we can be controlled.
The Tongass National Forest is our nation’s largest national forest in terms of land area. For decades, this forest provided logs for two pulp mills and several sawmills. However, in recent years, its primary, actually its only, product, has become passive recreation. Naturalists, employed on cruise ships, tout its ecological characteristics as passengers ooh and aah at expanses of western hemlock and spruce trees as they look out the ship’s windows. The Sierra Club likes to use the Tongass in its fund raising drives. They always use a photo of an old off-highway log truck with a huge load of red cedar traveling through a clear cut with the caption, “They are going to restart logging on the Tongass”. Old ladies in New Jersey mail in a check. Little do they know the Forest Service has no intention of restarting meaningful logging on the Tongass. SE Alaska has only one significant sawmill. Buried within the volumes of rules, regulations and guidelines that provide direction to Forest Service employees is a mandate called “community stability”. It is defined as “A multifaceted approach that recognizes the interconnectedness of the forest, the local communities that rely on it and the need of sustainable practices to ensure long term well being to both”. There is also a discussion in the Forest Service regs about economic development, defined as “to create opportunities for jobs and businesses related to forest resources”. As the saying goes, “It’s time to fish or cut bait”. It’s sad that it is now taking litigation to make the Forest Service do its job. Note to President Trump, There are 154 National Forests. Have your people sort these forests into two groups; those that are managed according to the multiple use mandate and those that are recreation only NFs. Turn those “recreation National Forests” into National Recreation areas; get rid of the timber sale staff, the road planners, and the ologists. Chop the budget. Start with the Tongass.
The USFS is largely run by women nowadays, and greeny women at that They don’t much care about logging and traditional use of forests. In fact, much like the USPS and the USFW, they would really rather you stay out of THEIR woods.
I live on POW. The devastation from logging is horrific. These loggers destroy the area and leave carnage in their wake – it literally looks like these areas have been bombed. They don’t re-populate trees like they do in the states – they leave broken and dead trees that don’t have value to them everywhere, destroying the area and making it difficult for animals and humans to traverse. This is also a source of weakened hillsides that are resulting in all the landslides you’re reading about in the news. All of this is done for pennies on the dollar that they supposedly are paying to exploit the environment. I am disgusted with outside people coming to Alaska to exploit the resources and leaving a mess for residents to deal with.