No fast track for governor’s timber bill

Forested land on the western bank of the Lynn Canal near Haines, July 14, 2025. (Will Steinfeld/Chilkat Valley News)

By Will Steinfeld

Chilkat Valley News

A bill pitched by Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration as a “paradigm shift” for state forest timber harvest will not be fast-tracked through the legislature as the governor has requested.

The overall aim of the bill is to lease out state land to private entities for “active management” of forests — in other words, various amounts of timber cutting. The leases would run up to 110 years. 

The increased cutting, and associated roadbuilding, would boost jobs and economic activity, state officials said during a hearing on the bill last year. It would also help fight beetle infestations, lower fire risk, and increase recreational access, the state’s pitch added. 

Critics, both inside and outside the legislature, have raised concerns about ecological impact, including a part of the bill that would exempt the timber-harvest leases from complying with the Alaska Forest Resources and Practices Act. Critics have also taken aim at changes to public process written into the bill, including a measure that would exempt the state from choosing the highest bidder for a lease at public auction. 

The bill has officially been on the table since a year ago, when it was personally sent by Dunleavy to the legislature. But it hasn’t yet gained traction. 

During last spring’s legislative session, the bill failed to advance past committee discussion. The bill is once again in the legislature’s House and Senate Resource committees. It arrived this year with an “urgent” request from the governor for the bill to be heard and moved out of committee, senate majority leader and resources chair Cathy Giessel said last month. 

But three weeks into the session, Giessel doesn’t look to be going along with the governor’s fast-track plan. After one brief committee hearing in January, Giessel said the bill would be set aside, and the bill has not yet been scheduled for a second committee hearing. 

Active Forest Management

If the bill does pass, it could spell significant changes for the Haines State Forest. As it stands now, much of the local state forest is inaccessible or difficult to access — especially for timber cutting. 

According to the Department of Natural Resources, 52.5 million acres of state-owned land is forested, 2.1 million acres of which are in three officially-designated state forests: the Tanana State Forest, Southeast State Forest, and Haines State Forest. 

On much of that acreage, state managers have “mostly allowed nature to run its course,” said then-Department of Natural Resources Commissioner John Boyle at a Senate Resources hearing on the bill last February. And according to Boyle, that natural course of forests, without any cutting or clearing, has been a negative. 

Boyle cited bark beetle outbreaks and increased wildfire risk in old, roadless forest, as well as lack of marketable timber production. 

As a counterpoint, Boyle pointed to silviculture programs in Canada and Sweden, in which some forests are cut and re-planted for timber production. A similar model, he said, spurred by private dollars, could bring some kind of return of past decades, with logging camps throughout Southeast.

“We still have the landbase, still have the ability to grow great timber,” Boyle told state senators. “But we have to incentivize investments and industry participation that will help create new opportunities.” 

The details of that arrangement face some skepticism, even from legislators broadly supportive of the effort. At last month’s Senate Resources hearing, Sen. Jesse Bjorkman of Nikiski praised the benefits of active forest management. But Bjorkman also said the department would be “very well served” to examine whether harvesters would have to follow FRPA guidelines, bringing up an example of Gravina Island in the Ketchikan Gateway Borough. 

“On Gravina you have three types of land: federal land, the Southeast State Forest, and you have a little bit of trust land. How that landscape looks on those three types of land is vastly different — I believe, and I could be wrong — because they have to follow the Forest Resources and Practices Act.”

The bill also includes a section dedicated specifically to the Haines State Forest. Department of Natural Resources special assistant Rena Miller said last year that was due to the Haines State Forest being located separately in statute from laws governing other state forests.

Miller said the goal of the Haines State Forest section was written to “ensure that generally speaking we allow for these sorts of leases on the Haines State Forest.” 

Procurement process changes

The bill includes a number of exemptions that would streamline and add discretion for granting timber leases, as proponents see it, or, according to skeptics, take away valuable safeguards. 

Compared to current timber sale procedure, the proposed leases would not require a best interest finding from the Department of Natural Resources, and would not have to be awarded to a highest bidder at public auction, among other changes.

That’s part of an effort to consider a broader definition of “fair return” than just the up-front sale price, DNR’s Miller said during last year’s hearing. 

Under the bill, fair return could include the long-term benefits of possible job creation, economic activity, and infrastructure development, building roads and bridges. 

“I’m worried about a situation where we’re leasing this out at a very low rate and not getting maximum value because we don’t seem to have a competitive bidding process here,” Sen. Forrest Dunbar of Anchorage said to Miller at the time. Dunbar referenced a perception that in the past, the federal government had sold land on favorable terms to investors who “became quite wealthy and politically connected.”

“At least the highest bid is objective,” Dunbar said. 

Another Senate Resources Committee member last year, Sen. Bill Wielechowski of Anchorage, said the procurement procedure the bill seeks to circumvent had been established to protect the public interest. 

“All of those things are taken out in this bill: there’s no procurement, no best interest findings, no competitive bidding, little or no opportunity for public to comment.”

• This article originally appeared in the Chilkat Valley News.