Forest Service surveys goshawks, in preparation for future timber sales near Wrangell

Anna Tollfeldt Belback, a natural resources technician for the Wrangell Ranger District, performing a goshawk survey in the Tongass National Forest this summer. (U.S. Forest Service photo)

By Leilani Combs

Wrangell Sentinel

Deep in some of the most remote areas of forest on Wrangell Island, U.S. Forest Service natural resource technician Anna Belback tramped her way through dense trees and brush to set up a pair of speakers. She cranked up the volume and hit play — an invisible bird began to call loudly from the speaker. The alarm call of an adult goshawk.

The Wrangell Ranger District has recently wrapped up a large goshawk survey to prepare for potential timber sales.

There is a push to increase logging on federally managed lands in Alaska following the 2025 presidential order to “unleash Alaska’s extraordinary resource potential.” Ahead of any logging operation, there are a variety of wildlife surveys required before anything can be cut, including these goshawk surveys.

“We’ve gone kind of all around Wrangell Island … parts of the island that I never thought I would see,” Belback said. “And some places that I quite frankly don’t really want to hike back into because, man, they’re pretty wicked.”

Despite the efforts of Belback and two other crew members who spread out across potential logging units, no goshawks were identified by this survey. The surveys must happen in two separate years before a timber sale, but they do not have to be consecutive years, according to Belback.

To conduct the surveys, field technicians hike into areas of land, often with no trails, to play bird calls to trigger responses from goshawks and other birds of prey that may be in the area.

In June, Belback said the calls mimic the goshawk alarm call, one a female might give her partner when there is danger in the area. Whereas in July they play a mixture of alarm calls and fledgling begging calls, the ones a baby goshawk would make when asking their parents for food.

They repeated this process over almost the entirety of Forest Service-managed potential timber units.

This might seem like a lot of effort to go through to identify some hard to locate, sparsely populated birds, but this species has a history of contested protection in the Tongass National Forest and is also used as a metric for ecosystem health.

Originally, these birds were considered northern goshawks, which are pretty widespread and well populated. However, in the 1990s, it was understood that the goshawks in Southeast Alaska and British Columbia were a subspecies. They named them the Queen Charlotte goshawk — which may be renamed yet again, since Queen Charlotte Islands have been renamed Haida Gwaii — which were far more rare. 

In 1994, the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned for the subspecies to be listed under the Endangered Species Act, which in some ways led to a renaming of the northern goshawk to the American goshawk and the Eurasian goshawk, according to Forest Service biologist Joe Delabrue.

“The way I understand it back when it was proposed for listing, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service separated out the two populations: the one in Southeast Alaska and the ones in British Columbia,” Delabrue said, “and the ones in B.C. got listed, but the ones in Alaska didn’t.” 

Whatever you call them, Delabrue said the ones in Alaska were not listed as endangered, at least in part, because of the Tongass resource management plan.

“We definitely have significant conservation concerns for the goshawk within the Tongass,” said Cooper Freeman, the Alaska director for the Center for Biological Diversity.

He said protections provided by the management plan are barely enough to keep the population alive. However, with surveys only occurring ahead of timber sales, he said there isn’t consistent population data to compare since the management plan took effect.

Freeman said that, with renewed push for logging in the second Trump administration, there has been an increase of surveys, but that he did not think the survey methods were very effective at locating the hawks. “So it’s quite likely that many goshawks, if they’re there, would go undetected, and logging would harm the birds.”

The Center for Biological Diversity is pushing for the protection of intact old-growth forests to protect, not only the goshawks, but the many species that rely on unfragmented habitat in the region. He said they would like to see an emphasis on other types of economic activities like hunting and recreation to create a more sustainable Alaska economy.

“I think it would be an error to paint this as (the) birds versus the economy,” said Freeman, “It’s time for the Tongass to move on and start taking care of its forests and protecting them for their highest value, which is leaving these old-growth trees standing.”

• This story originally appeared in the Wrangell Sentinel.