Defying trend, two new forestry staff could be headed to Haines
- Chilkat Valley News
- Dec 4, 2025
- 2 min read
By Will Steinfeld
Chilkat Valley News
There could soon be two new faces in the Division of Forestry Haines office, with the division promoting longtime area forester Greg Palmieri to a regionwide management position, and hoping to hire a second forester position in Haines, spokesperson Lorraine Henry said last week.
Palmieri has been the Haines State Forest manager since 2015, before that serving as the Haines resource forester for two decades. As regional forester for the division’s coastal region, he’ll be responsible for an area that stretches from the Mat-Su region down to Ketchikan. Palmieri will continue to be based in Haines.
For the last decade, Palmieri has been the lone Division of Forestry employee in the borough. But in the coming months, the division hopes to also begin hiring for a resource forester, Henry said. The second position has been included in the Department of Natural Resource’s operating budgets since the 2022 fiscal year, but has not been filled.
Adding a new position would make Haines somewhat unique. Forestry staffing has been decreasing in the past decade, and Haines is the only forestry post in the state adding a new position right now, Palmieri and Henry said this week. Palmieri, however, argued that from a historical perspective, having two employees in the office was an effort to “reestablish the historic minimum staffing in the area.”
“Back from 1963… through the late 1980s, there were up to 11 people (in the Haines forestry office),” Palmieri said. “In 1991, it was reduced to two people after the mill closure. To manage the Haines State Forest, there is plenty of work for two people.”
The office last had two employees in 2015, when one position was cut due to lost funding.
While Palmieri pointed to increasing regionwide capacity as the main driver of the new position, he said potential changes to the Haines State Forest management plan play a role.
The state is seeking changes to the management plan which would open up the whole state forest, outside of the bald eagle preserve, to logging and carbon sequestration.
“Really this is more about adequately staffing the offices the Division of Forestry manages throughout the region,” Palmieri said. “But is it going to help support work done with management plan changes moving forward? Absolutely.”
“Workload demand related to carbon offsets is an unknown for the division,” he said.
Neither Palmieri’s former position nor the new resource forester position have been publicly advertised.
To fill them, and create the new position, the division needs approval from the state Office of Management and Budget to bypass a state government-wide hiring freeze Gov. Mike Dunleavy ordered last May.
Henry, the Division of Forestry spokesperson, would not say whether they had submitted waivers yet for the two positions. The openings leave the Haines State Forest currently without dedicated management, and Palmieri remains the point of contact for Haines State Forest management questions.
• This article originally appeared in the Chilkat Valley News.
