Alaskan+Timber

__**Using Timber (Wood)**__


 * Why logging for Timber is a good thing**



Today, Alaska's forest products industry provides hundreds of jobs and contributes millions of dollars to Alaska's economy. Furthermore, each direct timber job creates at least three indirect jobs for doctors, retailers, teachers, and more.

Wood is //**renewable, biodegradable**// and //**recyclable.**// There is no other resource that can replace wood in an environmentally sound or economically feasible way.  Every year, each American consumes 630 pounds of paper and lumber, equal to a 100 foot tall tree. Hundreds of everyday items have their roots in Alaska's forests. Paper and lumber are easily recognized, but other products such as cellophane, rayon and fillers for everything from toothpaste to ice cream to chewing gum may not be. These, too, are products of our forests.  Today, forest growth in the United States exceeds harvest by 37%. More than 730 million acres of forest cover the U.S. - that equals two-thirds of the forested area present when Columbus landed in America. There is now 28% more standing timber volume in the U.S. than in 1952.  In Alaska, there are 129 million forested acres across the state. Sitka spruce, hemlock and cedar are the dominant species in Southeast and Southcentral, while white spruce, black cottonwood, aspen, and paper birch are found in the Interior forests.  A 'perfect' forest for all wildlife cannot exist. Different species require different habitats. Harvesting and other management activities add to this diversity. Often, wildlife increases and flourishes after harvesting. As the forest is managed, these increased populations can be maintained. And where there is game, there are predators. Bear, wolf and human hunters, find excellent herds of deer, moose and other browsing species.  The Alaska Forest Resources and Practices Act guarantees that streams and rivers are protected by strict regulations and best management practices. Buffer strips along stream banks are now required for all commercial harvest in Alaska on federal, state and private land.  Experts used to think debris in streams would be harmful to fish. Now we know that this debris is actually necessary to create shade pools and rearing habitat where fish can hide, rest and spawn. The fishing industry in Alaska has experienced record runs in the last decade.   **<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Why logging for timber is a bad thing ** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">

** Watershed Management and Soil Erosion **
Forests provide a buffer to filter water and to hold soil in place. They sustain water and soil resources through recycling nutrients. In watersheds where forests are degraded or destroyed, minimum flows decrease during the dry season, leading to drought, while peak floods and soil erosion increase during the wet season.

** Local Climate Regulation **
Beside the implications of large-scale logging for global warming, drastic changes in precipitation are direct and immediate when the forest cover is removed.174 Changes in transpiration result in a greater intensity of tropical rainfall, enhancing both run-off and erosion, even if the total amount of rainfall remains unchanged. Forest loss can also make rainfall more erratic, thus lengthening dry periods.175

** Forest Fires **
Most of the destructive forest fires that have recently raged out of control across the world, from the Amazon to Indonesia, are widely acknowledged to have been either started by and/or exacerbated by logging and agricultural development companies, such as the oil palm industry. One of the most detailed studies on the effects of fires in Kalimantan, Indonesia, concludes that the considerable decrease in foliage and related changes in the stand structure, increase of albedo, and horizontal and vertical air movements caused by fires, may produce significant and lasting effects on the regional climate.176

** Impacts on the Marine Environment **
Unsustainable logging mobilises debris that not only finds its way into the streams and rivers but also to the marine environment, where it damages mangroves and coral reefs, habitats crucial for aquatic life. In the Solomon Islands, the unique Marovo Lagoon, a proposed World Heritage Site, is threatened by the ecologically-destructive logging operations occurring in the surrounding forests. In Papua New Guinea, coral reefs have been destroyed to construct log ponds.

** Loss of Biodiversity **
Logging often destroys natural habitats, resulting in the loss of biodiversity and sometimes leading to the local, and possibly global, extinction of species. Although estimates of the rates of loss vary, few deny the reality of the current losses of both flora and fauna.177

According to a joint report by the Worldwide Fund for Nature and the Sarawak Forest Department, "Logging causes immediate forest disturbances, long-term habitat changes (e.g. damage to food trees and salt-licks), increased hunting by timber company workers and availability of logging roads as hunting routes. The destruction of wildlife from habitat loss must be recognised to be on an enormous scale".178 In Central Africa, the opening-up of the forest by logging facilitates the illegal hunting of wildlife, including protected species such as primates, and is leading to a decline in wildlife populations.179 Deterioration in water quality has caused a decline in fish stocks and has affected aquatic biological diversity because indigenous animals and plant life are highly vulnerable to oxygen depletion, suspended particulate matter and a lack of light.180

Even so called selective logging severely affects the complex and rich biodiversity of forests through excessive damage to residual stands, destruction of other plant and tree species and the creaming-off of species which are the most valuable for timber. An FAO study in Malaysia has shown that as much as 50% of the standing forest may be damaged and the surface soil destroyed when up to 30% of the ground surface is exposed. During silvicultural treatment in logging operations in Sarawak, so-called uneconomic forest species are deliberately poisoned. This reduces the complexity and species diversity of the tropical forests to only 10% of the original condition, resulting in the systematic elimination of tree genetic resources and contamination of the environment.