Caves raise concerns about SE logging plan
Numerous caves on island near Ketchikan where logging is slated
ANCHORAGE - A group of underground explorers wants the U.S. Forest Service to drop plans to log timber on an island west of Ketchikan that's honeycombed with caves.
The Tongass Cave Project effort is focusing on the Kosciusko Island sale, which District Ranger Dave Schmid said is expected to yield about 26 million board feet of timber.
Cave project members, who have been exploring Southeast caverns for years, point to previous underground discoveries that have changed the understanding of the region's history. And they say Forest Service rules that protect caves don't do a good enough job.
"They're going to need to go back in and do their homework," said Steve Lewis, co-director of the Tongass Cave Project and a former Forest Service employee who conducted cave expeditions for the agency.
But foresters and industry supporters say the area can be logged without destroying caves and the landscape they're found in, called karst.
"The caves are pretty sensitive. We don't want to do anything to disturb them," said Owen Graham, executive director of the Alaska Forest Association, a logging organization.
The caves are created when rain and groundwater mixes with the forest floor's naturally acidic soil to create a mild solution that slowly dissolves the limestone and marble below, leaving warrens of caves, underground streams and deep sinkholes.
Karst areas of the Tongass have produced a wealth of scientific discoveries over the last couple of decades. Human and animal bones up to 50,000 years old have turned up, as well as insects not thought to exist west of the Rockies, said Lewis.
Bones from animals now extinct in Southeast, such as brown bear, caribou, arctic and red fox, have been pulled out of caves in Southeast, said Jim Baichtal, forest geologist and cave expert with the U.S. Forest Service. The remains of a shaman were found in a sea cave on Kosciusko Island, he said.
The bones have taught scientists, among other things, that not all of Southeast was covered by ice during the Ice Age, Schmid said.
Karst also tends to grow especially large trees.
Much of the logging that has taken place in Southeast since the 1950s has occurred in low-elevation karst lands, Schmid and others said.
Before foresters came up with modern-day methods of tree cutting, considerable damage was done to the caves, according to the Forest Service. Clearcut logging removes the forest's canopy cover, which can change the drainage patterns that flow into caves, sometimes clogging them with sediment and other debris.
These days, the Forest Service requires loggers to leave buffers, or no-cut zones, around caves, sinkholes or other obvious features of karst. Agency foresters try to avoid allowing timber sales in areas that are especially vulnerable, according to the agency. If a cave is found, the Forest Service can stop a logging operation or require additional protections.
Schmid said almost three-quarters of the original Kosciusko timber sale was ruled out because of karst. In the remaining areas where logging will be allowed, cutters will be required to leave at least 30 percent of the forest canopy, both to protect wildlife and karst, he said.
Schmid said the guidelines are adequate to allow some logging while protecting the karst. But Lewis said crews from the Tongass Cave Project did their own survey and located twice as many caves and karst features as did the Forest Service.
The Kosciusko Island timber sale is still in the planning stages. It's not expected to be offered to loggers until next year at the earliest.