Background

Tongass Timber Logged and Left to Rot

The Forest Service loses millions of dollars a year as it hands over public trees for cutting by private companies. That's not news. What is news is that the story is even worse than that, at least in some places, where the government has vastly overestimated demand for timber and consequently offered much more than needed to satisfy local mills.

Take the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. According to the Washington Post, one timber company, Whitestone Southeast Logging, abandoned and left to rot some 400,000 board feet of timber it deemed too expensive to get to the mill. All this went on in a roadless area.

The photographs above, taken by Juneau resident Skip Gray, shows the aftermath of the Humpback-Gallagher timber sale on Chichagof Island. That ripped up hillside, formerly home to wildlife living in a forest, now home to stumps, belongs to you and me. The piles of logs beside the roads in these pictures were clearcut from the old growth forest but left to rot because they were deemed not sufficiently valuable.