All in all the first half century of Alaska statehood has been a resounding success. Resource development drives the 49th state’s economy and provides jobs and income that have powered five decades of economic expansion.

The state’s finances and economy are dominated by oil production, which comprises up to 90 percent of Alaska’s unrestricted General Fund revenues. Significant revenues and jobs are also generated from extraction of coal, gold, zinc and other minerals from state-owned, private and federal lands.

We’ve developed our communities; settled aboriginal land claims and empowered Alaska Natives through robust institutions; we have billions of dollars in rainy day funds; we have well managed sustainable fisheries that are a model for the world; and we have robust regulatory programs that protect renewable resources.

One area in which we have failed is in the management of federal lands in a balanced and multiple-use fashion. A clear example of such failure is in Southeast Alaska. On the 17 million acre Tongass National Forest, the Forest Service established 50-year timber supply contracts in the 1950s to add stability to the seasonal industries that had made up the Southeast Alaska economy. The long-term guarantee for timber attracted investment capital for pulp mills and year-round timber enterprises.

While this strong economic foundation helped sell the cause for statehood, these same federal contracts restricted the state in its land selections in the panhandle.

Of the total statehood land entitlement of approximately 104 million acres, only 400,000 acres, just 0.38%, could be selected from Alaska’s national forests. The federal government needed to retain these lands to meet its contractual commitment to wood the mills in Southeast.

That may have made some sense in the fifties. Fifty years ago the federal government was committed to leveraging this renewable resource to provide economic vitality to Alaska’s panhandle region. The budding state didn’t need to press for additional selection rights in the Tongass, trusting that the federal government would keep its social contract with the people of this region and provide sufficient timber to support a viable regional economy.

In the 1990s, the federal government reneged on the long-term contracts. Subsequent federal timber policy has all but stopped the supply of any viable federal timber for economic development. The social contract with Southeast Alaskan communities is broken, and the endless cycle of forest plan revisions, litigation, plan and timber sale appeals has the last family-owned sawmills in Southeast clinging on the brink of survival.

Here at our 50th birthday reflecting back, limiting the state land entitlement on the Tongass because the federal government needed the land to meet timber supply obligations to the mills looks like a bait and switch. Recognizing this, the Southeast Conference, an organization representing most of the communities in Southeast Alaska, has proposed a concept whereby the state would be allowed to select additional lands on the Tongass to develop a working state forest to provide the sustainable and dependable timber supply needed for Southeast Alaska’s economic foundation.

Given a sufficient state managed land base in Southeast Alaska, the next 50 years of statehood could do justice to the spirit and intent of Teddy Roosevelt in the establishment of the Tongass Forest. On the subject of the appropriate role for publically-owned forests President Roosevelt said:

“That object is not to preserve forests because they are beautiful, though that is good in itself; nor because they are refuges for the wild creatures of the wilderness, though that, too, is good in itself; but the primary object of our forest policy, as of the land policy of the United States, is the making of prosperous homes. … a forest which contributes nothing to the wealth, progress, or safety of the country is of no interest to the Government...”

The State of Alaska has demonstrated its ability to manage sustainable resources in the spirit and tradition of Roosevelt conservation. Be it forests or salmon, sustainable management for the benefit of all Alaskans is embedded in our state constitution.

In promoting the concept of a working state forest in Southeast Alaska, the Southeast Conference is on to something. Perhaps its time for Alaska to manage a slice of the Tongass. Imagine the next chapter in statehood history with a state managed working forest along-side the Tongass, providing the “prosperous homes, wealth, progress and safety” that Roosevelt envisioned a century ago and providing the economic vitality to the region that our state founders expected.

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