Clearcut Logging
Dear Editor: Why is Lisa Murkowski still trying to drag us back into the archaic and obsolete timber ages? Last week, our senator visited Southeast Alaska with the chief of the Forest Service, Vicki Christiansen, to try to prove that Southeast Alaska needs more land opened to clearcut logging. She is sorely mistaken.
I’ve lived in Southeast Alaska most of my life, and I raised a family here. Both of my sons support their families through commercial salmon fishing, and I only recently retired from a 40-year fishing career. Southeast Alaska runs on fishing, recreation, subsistence, and tourism – not timber. If Sen. Murkowski succeeds in opening the Tongass to large-scale logging, it will have a terrible effect on the salmon returns. We don’t need more allowances for clearcutting and timber harvest, we need healthy salmon habitat for our fishing families.
I support the existing 2001 National Roadless Rule, which prevents logging on most of the Tongass National Forest without impeding our ability to access the land. Clearcutting old-growth timber doesn’t make sense anymore; it sacrifices our way of life and costs $20 million a year in government subsidies. Southeast Alaska used to run on clearcutting old growth, but we’re done with that now. Lisa Murkowski needs to stop living in the past and listen to her constituents.
Stephen Lawrie, Sitka
