Old or young growth? Tongass logging at a crossroads

摘要

PRINCE OF WALES ISLAND, Alaska — Thousands of acres in southeast Alaska are ready for a second wave of logging, but is the timber industry ready to cut it? That question lurks in the background as the Forest Service and political leaders face a series of decisions that will shape the future of the Tongass National Forest, one of the world's last intact temperate rainforests and the biggest national forest in the United States. A recent inventory of young growth in the nearly 17-million-acre Tongass shows enough supply to replace what the Forest Service harvests from old-growth forests, but officials and timber companies still say a full transition to a young-growth industry is 20 years or more away.