Details
Nothing to say, yet
Comment
Nothing to say, yet
Listen to New Recording 56 by Sally Thompson MP3 song. New Recording 56 song from Sally Thompson is available on Audio.com. The duration of song is 37:34. This high-quality MP3 track has 65.157 kbps bitrate and was uploaded on 23 Sep 2025. Stream and download New Recording 56 by Sally Thompson for free on Audio.com – your ultimate destination for MP3 music.
Comment
Loading comments...
The conversation covers a range of topics, starting with a person studying in Sweden for a transatlantic forestry master program. They discuss taking forest history courses, conducting research in old-growth forests, dendrochronology, and interviewing experts for a project. They also touch on personal experiences working for the Forest Service, including trail maintenance, mining inspections, wilderness recreation, and environmental coordination. The discussion highlights the speaker's diverse career path within the Forest Service, emphasizing the fulfilling nature of fieldwork and building lifelong friendships. Yeah, I'm over in Sweden for the year. I'm doing a, I think it's a transatlantic forestry master, so I spend a year at a school in Europe and then a year in Canada. So my first year is in Sweden at Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Umeå, which is pretty far north, and taking a forest history course right now, and we're learning about different forest history methods, and we are just up further north in an old-growth forest and took tree cores, and we're learning about dendrochronology, and then another, one of the methods they would like us to practice is interviewing to learn more about forest history, and so that's the goal for this project, to interview someone with experience in forest, in forestry work, or that realm, and then the goal is to write a two to three page report and then give a presentation to the class. So that's the broad project for this, and yeah, I have two classes this term, and then I'll start my master's thesis next semester, so yeah. Where are you actually graduating from, what university? University of British Columbia. Oh, okay. So I'll be back, closer to home next year, which I'm excited about, yeah. But this year is pretty far from home, so, but it's been, it feels pretty similar to Alaska in a lot of ways, yeah, like not super hot, and a lot of forests, a lot of lakes, and it looks familiar, I didn't expect all the plants to be quite as familiar as they are. Yeah, that's great. Is it mountainous, or just kind of more lakes and ridges and low gnomes, though? I'm on like the very east coast, so it's a lot more lakes and like low ridges, it's not very mountainous here. I've gone up a little bit to the mountains, and they're still pretty mild, I think, like on the Swedish side, I think, compared to Norway, is what I've seen so far, but yeah. I think there's a huge cross-country ski culture here, which I'm excited about for the winter. Yeah. Okay, well, why don't you fire away, and we'll see if we can help you, we're not sure we can, but we'll take a stab at it. Yeah, the first question I had was just, tell me a little bit about yourself, and where are you from, what did you do in your free time, how did you end up working for the Forest Service, is my understanding of my dialect, yeah. Dan will probably be most of the answer, because I'm more of a physician being as a biologist, and he went to forestry. Okay. Yeah, even though, and I use the term forestry loosely, because I didn't do a lot of forestry in the sense of, you know, silvicultural work or timber harvest, I was more in recreation than I was in any of those things, so, but as far as, you know, my, just a brief background, I went to Rutgers in New Jersey, and I graduated with a natural resource management degree, and right after I graduated, I took a summer job working for what they call the YCT, the Youth Conservation Corps, which is in 1978, so that's how old I am, but older than your parents, I suspect, and so I came up here that summer of 78 and worked, and I just fell in love with the place, and I've been here ever since, and then I, so in my career with the Forest Service, for a long time, for about 10 years, I did cabin and trail maintenance. Oh, wow, yeah. You know, on Appletee Island, so I used to supervise crews and do trail work there. I did that for a while, and then I got into mining with the Forest Service, not that I was doing the mining, I was supervising, you know, and doing inspections of the Greens Creek mine on Appletee. Okay. So I did that for about eight years, and then I, and then I got back into recreation for, you know, wilderness recreation, which is my, kind of my first love, and I wound up becoming, at the district, they call you a resource assistant, you're right below the district ranger, so I supervised a fish biologist, a wildlife biologist, a wilderness ranger program, an archaeologist, and I've also, at one time or another, supervised what they call the lands program, which is the folks that, you know, do all the special use permits for guides, et cetera. Oh, okay. I did that for about another eight years, and then around 2005, I wound up going to the regional office in Juneau and worked in the federal building, and I wound up retiring as the regional environmental coordinator. Okay. So, yeah, I did that for 13 years, and that's, you know, basically providing feedback on environmental impact statements that people were writing and providing guidance and critiques and things like teaching, you know, stuff like that. Yeah, wow. That's cool. I didn't, that spans such a huge area of the Forest Service, too. That's really cool. Yeah. Yeah, one thing that's really nice about the Forest Service is you start out doing something. If you want to do something else, they're pretty good about giving you a chance to do something different, even without, like, a lot of experience or whatever. Yeah. You know, you kind of work your way in, and, you know, unfortunately, I worked with good people, had good mentors, and so it made it, you know, easier to transition from job to job. Yeah. Did you live in Juneau that entire time, Pat, or on Admiralty? I spent my entire career in Juneau. Oh, wow. Would you go over to Admiralty on, like, on a boat all the time? How was working in Admiralty? We typically went by plane. Okay. We fly, you know, because a lot of the work we did, most of the trails on Admiralty, virtually all the trails on Admiralty were on the central part of the lake chain there. Oh, yeah. They're old CCC trails that we were redoing, either rushing them out, and most of the trails needed to be reconstructed, and so we had crews doing it, and I supervised a native crew from Angoon, and so that's where I spent the bulk of my time in the central part of the island for various things, you know. We would get around and go to some of the other bays and do special use permit inspections or look at certain things and et cetera, but that was the bulk of it. Okay. Yeah. I think my uncle, he was a guide, a bear hunting guide, I think, on the ABC Islands for some time. What's his name? Mike Cepulis. Oh, he's your uncle? Yeah. He's my... Wow, I didn't know that. Yeah, he used to handle his permit. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. I used to seal bears for him when he came to fish and game. He had to get the bear seals that the hunters shot and record it and take the skull and take a tooth and that kind of thing, and so I remember his name from that. Yeah. Did he pass away? Yeah, he did about four years ago, I think. He had a heart attack or something, didn't he? Yeah, yeah, but the boat, I think... I worked at the harbor this summer, and the boat showed up, the Sally Girl, and I think he's still guiding off of it. It's a guy down in Petersburg. Oh, yeah, I'm trying to think who it is from Petersburg. I don't know that name. I know a lot of the guides, especially the bear guides, because we wound up having... They would come over to Applebee's, so we were always dealing with them for some of the permit stuff there. Yeah. Wow, that's really cool. Small world. That's two to four years. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and what about... How did you end up working for Fish and Game? Yeah, well, I just finished grad school. We just finished grad school, and Ken came up to work for the Forest Service, and he already had a job lined up, and I didn't, and I kind of liked Idaho. I didn't really want to leave, but the oil money was rolling in back in the early 80s and you could just pretty much walk into any state office and get a job, and that's kind of what I did. I came up, and I, without very little experience, no experience in Alaska, actually, and just walked into one of the Fish and Game offices and got hired on as a fisheries person down at one of the hatcheries, and we fly... I can't remember the name of the hatchery. It's not running anymore. Here's our cat, by the way. Oh, yeah. This is Slash. Slash. Hi, there. I'm not Slash. He's a curious kitty, but... Yeah. So then, and then I just worked my way up in Fish and Game. I worked for the subsistence division. I did a bunch of research in Angoon and Yakutat and in Cape, and I went there and lived and talked to people. I'd stay for several weeks at a time and interview people about their hunting and fishing activities and document it and do some mapping with them. And then I thought I would wildlife division as a biologist. Okay. Yeah, and then I worked there for most of my career. I did education for them, and I managed Pack Creek, the brown bear viewing area. Oh, yeah. Wow. And then at the very end, the last couple of years, I was working for the fisheries for Sport Fish, and I did a bunch of education and information officers, as they called it, for my last couple of years. But mostly as a biologist, I was with Wildlife. Yeah. Wow. That's cool. Yeah. That's so cool. How did you both enjoy this work? It sounded like, Ken, you really liked the wilderness element of working in some of the more remote areas. Or what would you say that your favorite element of the work was? And it was pretty varied. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think almost anyone who works for the Forest Service that works in the field versus in the office is going to tell you the best part of their career was in the woods. Yeah. And I'd be no different in that regard. No, I mean, I loved working in the woods. I loved living in the woods, you know. And obviously, it's nice to come home and get a hot shower. But, you know, they fed us well. And, you know, the work was good. And usually the people were really good and made lifelong friends doing it. Yeah. And it felt like I was doing good work. So it was very fulfilling. Yeah. I worked a few summers for the Forest Service in Montana, in Missoula. Two, I think, 2023 summer and 2024 as well. And that was like the best job I think I've ever had. What were you doing? I was doing fire ecology research, like just the field work for the fire lab. And that's how I got into forestry. But getting to go on camping trips, basically, with your friends and then just play around in the woods was great. Were you based out of Missoula? Yeah. Okay, yeah. Yeah, that's a great town, too. So it's a really fun town and it's a beautiful area there. Yeah. I spent the fall of, I guess it was the fall of 1978, working for the state forestry division doing forest inventory. And I spent a fair amount of my time actually in Anaconda, Montana, which is southwest Montana. Okay. It was really interesting. You know, there was an interesting stretch. And, of course, the weather in the fall in Montana was awesome. Yeah. Yeah. It was fun, too, because everyone in Missoula seemed to work for the Forest Service. So I would meet my co-workers and then they would know everyone else that they've worked with. And so it was this huge web of everyone that worked for the Forest Service in different ways, which was pretty fun. Yeah. Sorry about the cat. He's been sleeping the whole day. And as soon as we get onto Zoom, he gets in front of everybody on camera. No, that's fine. Yeah. My next question is kind of relating. Like, I didn't know what forestry was, really, until I worked for the fire lab after college, which seems kind of remarkable. Like, growing up in the Tongass, and when I would tell people that I would be studying forestry from Juneau, they would often say, oh, what are you going to do with that? Or what is forestry? Which I thought was pretty interesting. And I was wondering if you had any insight into why, on a community level, an understanding of forestry or forest management? Like, there seemed to be some disconnection there. That's an interesting question. I'll take a stab at it. OK. Yeah. Yeah. But I think people think, oh, I do forestry, that you just go out and people are going to just go cut the trees. They see the trees getting cut, and that's forestry. Yeah. What they don't realize, and you can't really fault them because it's no different than any other field, really, when you get into the details, is that, well, there's people that are required to do an environmental analysis of wherever we would be, say, doing timber harvest. So you've got all these specialists, hydrologists, wildlife biologists, fisheries biologists, archaeologists. They're all roaming around the woods looking for things that could potentially cause undue impacts. Then you also have the whole timber part of it, which is you've got engineers laying roads out. You've got silviculturalists. You've got what they call pre-sale foresters. You've just got a whole army of people that are running around just to pull off a timber sale. And that's the part I think most people don't understand. And so when they finally get around to finishing the environmental analysis, and then the depends on the ranger or the forest supervisor makes a decision about what they're going to do out there, then they have to put together a contract. They have sale administration. People have to administer the sale, assuming the sale happens, because not all sales that are put up for a real bid actually get bid on. And so, yeah, there's all that going on behind the scenes versus just the people going out to cut trees. And I think one thing that contributed, at least in the earlier days, when they were doing tons of logging, especially with old road timbers, there was a huge controversy between environmentalists and loggers and what the markets were doing for timber. And at least when I first got here in the 80s, that was a big controversial thing. And so people didn't see, they just saw sort of black and white. If you were familiar with forestry, you know, and how the timber is really managed. So that might contribute to the two, that just the environmentalists, they were just opposing sides as far as harvesting timber in southeast for quite a while. Plus at that time, like Linnea said, at that time, the Forest Service had a couple of huge immense timber sale contracts with some Japanese firms, and they were cutting, I think they were authorized to cut like 450 million board feet, which is a staggering amount of old growth trees. Yeah. And a lot of that wound up as pulp. And so, but they were exporting a lot of that stuff. And they have all these sawmills and huge crews. I mean, they had huge staff. I mean, you know, the timber industry was huge in southeast Alaska. Yeah. And then the contracts got, well, I can't really, you know, I'm not the authority on this brand new stretch, but they kind of got voided or they got challenged in court ultimately, and they went away. And everyone thought the timber industry was just going to shrivel up and die. And, or some of the towns were just going to die. And, you know, definitely there was a big contraction, you know, when these, all that timber, you know, economy kind of disappeared. But there still was, you know, for a long time, even after the contract, there was still a lot of cutting. Over time, that's become less and less, partly because of the timber sales, partly because of demand, you know, there's a whole bunch of things, partly because I think a lot of people got concerned that the government was subsidizing a lot of these timber sales by building the roads. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that. It's been an ongoing issue, but the, you know, the number that always gets tossed around was that the foresters would spend a million dollars per mile on a road. And so they would have, they would build the roads and then it was economical to cut the trees. So we were, but if you took out the government subsidy, a lot of those sales were not, you know, and people were starting to catch on to that. And when they had all, and then we were built, I mean, Congress has, I mean, I'm tempted to tell you it's like 10,000 miles of roads at one point built. Really? I mean, it's staggering. Yeah, and what was happening was they couldn't afford to maintain it. You know, these roads wash out, they get overgrown, there's been all sorts of problems, landslides wipe them out and they couldn't really maintain them. So they realized they needed to start cutting back on, you know, actual roads, just basically closing them down. So there's a whole, you know, series of things kind of going on behind the scenes with the, as the timber industry slowly faded away. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I was trying to find like something in the library this summer to try and understand like the history. And I found a book and it was from the perspective of, I can't remember the name of these two women that were wives of loggers and had grown up in like logging towns. And they said, I think they talked about that, like the subsidizing from the federal government. I think, I guess that was the deal to, in order, I can't remember why, but I also read in that book, I couldn't finish it just because it was so heated from their perspective. Like it was very, I think very, like the tone was very, very angry, but it kind of clouded the like information. Yeah. A lot of people, you know, in the timber industry lost jobs out in the library. Yeah. And, you know, and what made it hard was that, you know, a lot of these loggers came up from Washington and Oregon and places like that. Yeah. Well, as the timber industry, you know, slowed down here, there weren't, the industry was also slowing down in those other states. So it was getting harder and harder to find work, timber fallers and all the equipment operators that go with, not just people cutting the trees, there's people running yarders and, you know, all cable, you know, chokers and saying things like, you know, the cable, you know, the chokers are the things you put on logs. Are you familiar with that at all? Oh, I think a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Basically when they haul log out of the woods. Yeah. They basically put a big steel cable on it and oftentimes depending on the harvest system, they will drag that log out of the woods or hook it up with a skyline and then it'll come, you know, off the ground, you know. Yeah. Things like that. So, yeah, a lot of those people lost jobs, which is, you know, never good. Yeah. Yeah. You know, there used to be balloon logging and stuff. Helicopter logging. Well, balloon logging, too. On Kupferdorf Islands or Cancun, when I did my subsistence research, when I first got there, I guess it was, I can't remember, in the mid-80s, it was, people were, it was a kind of a dying logging town. I mean, it was a native village, too. But a lot of people made their living by logging and, you know, they were pretty resentful about losing their lifestyle, their way of life. You know, it used to be a good life, you know, a really good life. And then they would go into telling me about the history of logging and how they used to haul the logs out of the woods with the balloons, you know, the balloons. Like, one color? Oh. Check that out. Yeah. You know, there is a book, and I think the Forest Service published it. Oh, okay. I mean, the history, I think it's a history of the Tongass, the Forest Service history on the Tongass. Okay. And I don't have a copy of it. It was in my office at the time. And, you know, it certainly is very interesting. And I feel like it all the way dates back to the, you know, 1910 or 1911. And so I think that was the history of the Tongass. And so if you could find something like that, there's probably tons of books about this subject, about, you know, the ultimate, you know, I wouldn't take them lies, but the timber industry is pretty substantially reduced right now. Yeah. It's gotten to the point, you know, you talk to people, it's like, are they even cutting any old growth, you know, which is still kind of hard to believe because there's still trees that could be cut. Yeah. It's just, it has to be economical. And without roads, it often isn't economical. And so, you know, that's where you get, you know, the special people, the people going into the woods, like in Tennessee, there's small mills, they go ahead and do small harvest. A lot of times they're working off an existing road system to get the trees. Yeah. And they get really high quality wood for musical instruments, or they don't, you know, they get cedar for lock, you know, for cabins or others, you know, furniture or siding for houses. That's really where the industry's at. They call it a lot of it second, and then there's second growth harvest, which is obviously they're not cutting old growth. They're cutting, you know, trees that are 75 years old. You can go and look at clear cuts. And I've looked at a lot of clear cuts over on Amelty over the years, you know, stuff from the, well, even before the forties, but, you know, thirties and forties, when it's, you know, even later fifties or when it became more industrial logging, or, you know, the things that you see where the whole hillside's gone or what have you. Yeah. But you can go into the woods and look at the trees 75 years later, and, you know, they're, depending on the site, the quality of the, you know, where if it's usually a good site, you're a forester, so if I'm saying anything you don't know, I mean, you already know just stopping, but basically a well-drained site like an alluvial fan or something flat where, you know, gets good sun exposure, you'll get, you know, 50 years, you'll get a spruce tree that's, you know, I don't know, it's a 20, maybe even 20 inches in diameter. They grow like weeds. Yeah. It's not a good site. And so those are the things they're now targeting is trying to go back to those sites and cut those trees. But in the process of that is a lot of the mills were not set up to do second growth milling, you know, so they're not, the tooling is different. Yeah. And, and so you have to have mills that can handle that. And that's been a whole nother chain for the industry as well. Yeah. Before I forget, if you want to talk to people who know way more about this than I do, I mean, way more, I mean, I can give you the name of a forest economist. Actually, she worked for the Pacific on North, actually, she worked for the forestry science lab and from my office, she's was the forest economist and she knows everything about the timber industry and the cost. I mean, everything. That's what she did for a living. Yeah. And she's a really cool lady. Sue Alexander. Sue Alexander. Yeah, she lives in Oregon now. And I'm sure she would be, I'm sure it'd be very helpful. The other person is that I know a guy in Sitka. He's a trained silviculturalist and he's actually gone, I think to Sweden and Germany because he's just loved silviculture. He's been up in Northern Alaska. And now he's retired now, but he goes, and so he's very familiar with timber harvest practices and silviculture. And those people know way more than I do. I'm just, I mean, I'm just touching the surface here. Okay. That would be, yeah, I would, that would be great too, to have their information as well. Just because I, in class and stuff, I have a really broad group of people in the class, like we have people from Scotland, a lot of people from Sweden, from Germany, from Canada. And I, and everyone kind of shares their perspective, but I just keep feeling like I'm like, oh, I don't know as much about where I'm from, from the forestry side to, you know, to talk about in class or, or, yeah, I just had all these questions about like, yeah, the history of the, of the Tongass too, because yeah, it seemed, it seemed like there was so much that happened before I was around. Before you were born. Yeah. And so like, right. And kind of just like. Don't feel bad. You've worked for the Forest Service for 35 years. Yeah. And I, I don't know that much really about the timber industry and timber harvestry. You know, I know kind of from reading and talking to people, but until you do it and you walk and you're laying out the road and you understand what, you know, what, what it's like to lay out a road or what it's like to lay the, put the boundaries together of a timber sale, knowing that there's, you know, when they put a timber sale in, they're looking at the slope. They're looking at how close they are to a riparian area. They're in the forest. The Tongass has a very detailed forest plan with guidelines. You know, you can't get within X feet of a stream and different streams require different setbacks. There's all sorts of stuff. The wildlife biologists have guide, you know, if they find a, a goshawk nest, they have to, you know, they keep a buffer around that. So there's tons of stuff. In fact, you know, the Tongass forest plan, if you were to Google it, look under just the Tongass forest plan and you could look at the plan. It's like 500 pages long. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. There'll be a quiz on it next week. Yeah. Yeah. You know, those are some great resources to look at. Okay. Yeah. This class is really cool. Our professor, like, also has options for, to get a better grade beyond just passing. One of them is, is review the history of the forest that you've spent a lot of time in or have a special connection to. So I, I think the forest plan, like looking into that for that assignment would be really would be great. Yeah. The forest plan, you know, it covers, the forest plan doesn't just cover timber. The forest plan covers fisheries, wildlife, minerals, recreation, outfitter guides. It covers archaeology. It covers all sorts of stuff. Yeah. So you can decide what you want to focus on, but you can kind of see, and it's a little, you know, it's a little confusing even to me still about how to, everything kind of overlaps. There's certain guidelines that apply here and there, but I think you'd get a general idea of the level of detail. The Tongass actually has a very good plan. Yeah. It's very, it's very specific, which is helpful. Yeah. Sometimes depending on your perspective, it's too helpful. Okay. Yeah. It's a, it's a good thing and you could find it online and download it. Yeah. Okay. That would be great. I'll, I'll look into that. Thank you. Yeah. What did you major in, in undergrad? Um, biology, which is kind of broad. Where did you go to school for that? University of Oregon, down in Eugene. Yeah. It was pretty broad and then I, I was thinking I would do like physical therapy and then yeah, I don't know. Um, realized that I think forestry would be a lot of fun and everyone I talked to had really good experiences growing, like, um, and working in forestry. Yeah. He's back. Oh, come on, buddy. Get out of the way. Okay. So, um, what other kind of questions did you have? I also was kind of curious about, I guess from the, like your experience in recreation too, but, um, what portion of the Forest Service's role in Juneau is tourism and how that's changed in recent years? I don't know if that would, I guess that would be like managing the special use permits or that kind of thing. In terms of tourism and recreation, you know, the forestry, you know, the new Forest Service side of things versus the downtown Juneau, which is not Forest Service jurisdiction. Yeah. I mean, obviously the big one has been in the Mountain Lake Area. Yeah. Now that's huge. And, you know, the tourism has gone, you know, skyrocketed over the years. And, you know, it used to be, I mean, in 1963, I think when the visitor center opened, they, you know, and it was pretty much just locals going there to eat pie on Friday night, you know, and they had a little pie shop. They had a pie shop. Oh, wow. All people that are few people who are still left remember the box shop. Yeah. Didn't your mom grow up in Juneau? Yeah. Yeah. That's how I remembered that. A little younger, though. Well, your mom is in her 50s, I think, right? Yeah. Yeah, seems like 10 years younger. She may not be old enough for that. Well, maybe. So anyway, they had the pie shop. I know, so visitation was pretty much locals. And then it took, you know, even in the 80s, I showed up in 78, and it was basically almost virtually no cruise ship visitors. And then only into the 90s did they really start in the helicopter activity and things like that. Going and all those things for the Forest Service creates a lot of management issues because you had all these helicopters now flying up in the ice field. So there was a whole, we did environmental impact statements for analyzing the effects to goats, the public, you know, everything under the sun. And then, of course, you have to, you know, allocate, you know, there's even designated flight routes. It gets fairly complicated. I mean, it's not rocket science, but it's not just people just flying anywhere they want. Yeah. And then actually tracking the number of, you know, people that come and then they have to pay a fee based on how many people they bring. And that takes up, you know, several people's time at the Juneau Ranger District just keeping track of all the people. Yeah. Yeah. I, what are some, I guess I can also read the plan as well. But I was wondering if you knew about some ways that tourism has influenced the management objectives or like the forest plan. Like, I guess I think about like on a cruise ship, you know, trying to make sure that people come to Alaska for like the untouched wilderness that's kind of like on a cruise ship. And I wonder if there's pressures from that within forest management, too, to make sure everything looks nice almost for them or like keeping that like untouched ideal as well. You know, it kind of, the growth of recreation kind of, you know, you've got, I'm going to use a little Vans for a graph, but you've got the timber industry going this way and you've got the, you know, recreation going this way. Yeah. And so people started realizing that recreation brought a lot of money into Southeast Alaska. Yeah. And so, you know, if you were to probably look at the forest plan for the, say the Tongass from the seventies, you'd probably find nothing, almost nothing about recreation. There was probably just timber related stuff. Yeah. There'd be something, but nothing like there is today, you know, now and in the plan. And so you've got these two things going counter direction. And so out of the timber industry faded and recreation became, you know, one of the big cash sources, you know, revenue sources for people before service started, obviously had to pay more attention to it, quite a bit more attention right now. Yeah. It gets a lot of attention compared to the timber industry because the number of jobs related to it and the demand, you know, the guides and people that come here are looking for more cabins to recreate, more, better maintained trails, more record. They want more recreation opportunities. So that's been a big growth area for the forest service in the last, you know, in the last 30 years. Yeah. Yeah. And recreation is there, there's been a, like a pressure to make sure you have like all the trails and, and it's like, and upkeep with the cabin. I didn't realize that guides use the cabins too for all the. Well, the guide, depending on the guides, in most cases, in many cases, the guides don't use the cabins. They, you know, because they're running a commercial activity and they're not allowed to, there are instances where they probably, you know, maybe a low use cabin or something like that. They've received permission to either at certain times of year, but for the most part, the guides don't use, but the guides use the trails. Yeah. So they're, and they use the trails a lot. I mean, here in Juneau, you know, they got thousands, tens of thousands of people on the trails here. There's other trails across the Tongass that get a lot of use from, you know, commercial, what they call commercial use, which is guided. Yeah. Yeah. Um, what I think I might, I, the meeting, it says I have the time list. I might need to upgrade. It says the time list I have is three minutes on the meeting. No, I thought. She's talking about, um, I think you paid for it. Oh, no, just on my Zoom, on my Zoom, like subscription. We've only been on for 34 minutes. Oh, okay. Then maybe we'll see if it, if it, if it cuts out. That's, that's why the meeting, it's not the, not me hanging up. It might be the, the meeting. I can start another one and send that along. Um, but, um, I was wondering if you noticed like through your time, um, what, if there's been any changes in, in forest structure or composition that, you know, I know you're not as much on the like forestry side, but I guess from like the perspective of trails or like building cabins, if there's been changes in. Um, really, I think in terms of forest structure, the thing that's changed the most, obviously a lot of the old timber harvests have grown back. I mean, I would say they're growing, they're obviously not old growth, but you can look at, I mean, there were even slopes that I saw that were pretty, you know, it's been cut in the sixties and seventies on Appleton. You look at them now, it's almost hard to see that fact that they've been cut. It's come back so quickly. Now, if you were to walk those stands, it would be clear they're not old growth. Yeah. But, you know, as you probably know, the progression is that once that area is clear cut, you know, and it stays there, you know, when I say there, I mean, you get a lot of blueberries and brush and things like that, but ultimately that gets shaded out by, um, second growth, you know, what they call dog hair, you know, thick thickets of spruce primarily, it gets so thick you can't even walk through it. And they actually, the forest service has to thin it. They have thinning contracts and they, you know, cut all the trees. They'll leave one tree every 12 feet and everything around it gets cut because, uh, to release the one good tree, because otherwise the trees don't grow. They all, you know, there's so much competition. The trees don't really grow well. So if they thin, which is a very, which is expensive to do. Yeah. Then the trees actually, um, grow better. It's no different than on your parents' yard. You know, if there was a whole bunch of trees and you cut one, you know, cut a bunch of them and one of them all of a sudden will start doing a lot better. That would be the similar effect. But the other thing that happens with when they do thinning, if you cut all these small trees, you know, they're 12, they're 15, 20 years old and they might be, you know, this big around or whatever. Yeah. Of course, if they're so thick, you can barely walk. You don't want to walk through it because the needles are so sharp and it's so dense. But once they thin it, they, all those trees lay kind of, you have all these dead trees on the ground and it actually, what it actually does is create a barrier to wildlife, primarily deer. And so they actually have to cut, sometimes cut the brush that thin trees into thinner, you know, slices. So it settles down. Once it settles, the deer can step over it. But once it's, if it's just cut, you've got this three or four foot high wall of dead trees and the deer can't get through it. Oh, okay. They actually will avoid that whole area. They'll go around the edges of the clear cut because they can't get through that clear cut, what would have been a clear cut. Oh, okay. Yeah. So harvesting trees just has a domino effect as far as wildlife and other, you know, fish and whatever. Yeah. Health, whatever living thing. Oh, yeah.
There are no comments yet.
Be the first! Share your thoughts.
