newsminer.com

FAIRBANKS — The clean scent of fresh-cut spruce filled the air at Northland Wood Products as a sharp-toothed chain wailed, slicing the ends off huge tree trucks.

Ron Rasmussen, manager of logging operations, headed toward towering stacks of lumber set out to dry in Alaska’s summer sun. Walking on ground made soft and squishy by several feet of accumulated sawdust, he said the business has 43 full-time employees on the payroll right now, a figure that could climb to as many as 50 in the summer, but drops to around 30 in the off-season.

The employees cut white spruce in the Tanana Valley State Forest, hauling the hefty logs to the South Fairbanks facility where the wood is milled into dimensional lumber for general construction, three-sided logs for new homes and specialty products like the 12x12s in demand on the North Slope.

All of the wood cut, dried and planed at the mill — about 5 million board-feet a year — comes from the Tanana Valley State Forest.

“It’s very important to us,” Rasmussen said. “If it wasn’t for the forest, we’d be just another retailer. The sawmills here puts us in a niche nobody else is in. We can supply a lot of products a little bit easier than the other people. But without the state forest, we wouldn’t have the sawmill, and we’d be just another retail yard.”

The 1.88 million-acre Tanana Valley State Forest celebrated its 25th anniversary on Tuesday.

Home to five main species of trees, the forest was established in 1983 to encourage timber harvesting while allowing other public uses and benefits along the way. While timber harvesting remains the main commercial use, many people pick berries and mushrooms, hunt and hike in the woods that reach from Nenana to Tok.

Commercial harvesting peaked in the 1990s when clear-grained white spruce was in demand in Japan, forest resource manager Doug Hanson said. The export market fell apart when new building codes were passed.

Today, nearly all wood culled from the Tanana Valley forest goes to in-state markets.

But loggers and sawyers must be hardy by nature, and they have adapted. In particular, many have developed niches or proven flexible in order to meet market changes, Hanson said.

The forest reaps benefits from commercial logging. Small-diameter timber poorly suited for milling is left in piles easily accessed by roads. Individuals can buy inexpensive permits and haul their own firewood from those piles. Recreationists and hunters can use the logging roads to access fresh turf. Berries flourish, especially where trees have been cleared. And logging benefits wildlife by enhancing habitat, Hanson said.

“As the forest ages, we begin to lose that wildlife habitat, especially closer in where people want to hunt,” Hanson explained. “Having different types of harvest kind of breaks up the habitat and improves it substantially for big and small game.”

Nature used to renew habitats through wildfire, but as more people build homes on land that once was forest, fire suppression has become more immediate, Hanson said.

“Really, the only other way to create wildlife habitat is through timber harvest,” he said.

Benefits also come as revenue generation. The Tanana Valley State Forest generates about $350,000 annually for the state, largely through timber contracts, Hanson said. He estimated each dollar turns over at least four times in the economy.

The contracts also provide a livelihood to harvesters like Northland Wood, which has been in business since 1965, well before the forest bounds were set.

“If it wasn’t for the forest there, we’d be just like Home Depot and Lowe’s,” Rasmussen said. Instead, the business can market a locally grown, locally made product for local use, and it handles special orders that aren’t readily available at most chain retailers.

A bulldozer shepherds logs from a stockpile to a sharp, three-quarter-inch blade set on a chain that gnaws the stout trunks to a set length. From there, the logs are fed into a building housing a thick, 40-inch diameter circular blade.

Sawyer Russ Dillingham sits in a seat that looks as if it was lifted from an auto. He manipulates foot pedals and hand levers, which remotely set the logs into position and trigger the blade. Every five seconds or so, the circular blade whines past, a spout shooting sawdust out the side, taking a slab off the round log and transforming its long sides into flat surfaces.

On a good day, with average-diameter logs, Dillingham can edge out 370 logs a day. The ones he’s working on now, though, are thicker than normal, dropping the daily tally to about 135.

The flow is steady at the large mill, and smaller commercial operators able to react quickly to a changing market are also hard at work.

Versatility has helped Alaska Birch Works owner Bob Zachel earn a year-round living with his chainsaw and timber contracts for years.

Zachel accesses his contract stands on some of the 300-plus miles of road in the Tanana Valley State Forest system. He maneuvers a bulldozer to drag cut trees to a roadside point. From there, contract truckers haul the timber to Zachel’s Goldstream shop, where logs are run through a mill before drying in a vacuum kiln.

For the most part, Zachel’s finished product is rough-cut dimensional lumber, three-sided house logs and lap siding sold for general construction. Some birch is refined for woodworkers and cabinet makers.

Like so many businesses, a sawmill’s fortunes dip and climb with demand. That’s where the forest has proven flexible.

When Home Depot and Lowe’s opened a few years ago, Zachel’s dimensional lumber sales took a hard hit. But, the same driver offered a boost in another way. With low prices on plywood and other building materials at the retail giants, more people built new homes and demand for three-sided house logs surged.

Now, however, business is down all-around, save for a spike in firewood demand, Zachel said. His mill has run about half of normal so far this year due to a general construction slow-down.

“People are spending their money on petroleum,” Zachel said.

The mill should be running, but it’s not. People will need heat, regardless.

“The demand for heating oil might go down. The demand for heat never will,” Zachel said. “This year, I’m going to sell firewood.”