Leask Lakes to be Logged
By Scott Bowlen Daily News Staff Writer

    The Alaska Mental Health Trust has decided against selling conservation easements on its 4,800-acre tract at Leask Lakes, offering instead to sell the entire property to a local group after it's been roaded and logged.
    The trust's March 3 offer surprised the Leask Users Coalition, which has been working to raise money to potentially reimburse the trust for a combination of prohibiting and reducing timber harvest on between 600 and 1,000 acres of the property.
    Trust Land Office and Alcan Forest Products officials expect to sign a timber harvest contract before May. However, the five-year deal doesn't contain all the conservation measures sought by the coalition.
    Alcan and trust officials say they're willing to talk about further protections. "We are willing to seriously consider proposals from them and, in my mind, there's still time," said Doug Campbell, senior resources manager for the trust's lands office.
    And coalition members say they hope to find a way to reach an agreement before the contract is signed.
    "The ultimate goal is ... we have a conservation plan right along with that
contract,'" said Laura Baker, the coalition's coordinator. After the contract is
signed, it's too late to think about how they can better manage those assets."
    The situation is the latest in a long series of debates about what to do with the tract, a 7.5-square-mile combination of forest, muskeg and watershed at the head of George Inlet 15 miles northeast of Ketchikan.
    To date, there have been no major timber harvests on the property, which has two lakes, covering a total of about 400 acres, that drain down Leask Creek to Leask Cove.
Three sides of the property are bordered by the Tongass National Forest, and its small southern boundary abuts Cape Fox Corp. land.
    "Due to its location, this parcel is highly valuable for public use of recreation opportunities, the off-island road corridor, timber for local processing, tourism development, and wildlife habitat for commercial, sport and subsistence hunting fishing and trapping," the coalition wrote in a Nov. 3 letter to the Ketchikan Gateway Borough Assembly.
    Over time, that combination of features has sparked efforts to manage the land in different ways. During the early 1990s, for example, there were unsuccessful efforts to preserve the entire area as a state park, and to trade part of it to Cape Fox for timber uses.
    The Alaska Mental Health Trust acquired the property from the state Department of Natural Resources in 1994, after a legal settlement reconstituted the trust by giving it 1 million acres of state land and $200 million in cash.
    The trust's mission is to use income from its land and cash assets to fund a "comprehensive integrated mental health program to improve the lives and circumstances of its beneficiaries, according to trust information. About 130,000 trust acres are being managed as commercial forestland to produce income.
    "Current emphasis of the Trust is to dispose of significant timber resources in the vicinity of Petersburg, Wrangell and Ketchikan," states the Trust Land Office's Web site. "Trust timber sales have accounted for nearly one half of the TLO's annual income for the last several years, with over (200) million board feet being sold and harvested during that time."
    Among the trust's timber tracts in and around Ketchikan are the recent sale areas on Gravina Island, Signal Mountain and Minerva Mountain near Bear Valley. Knowing that Leask Lakes was being scheduled for harvest, local community members in early 2004 formed the Leask Users Coalition to develop and gain support for conserving what they see as vital areas for wildlife, recreation and watersheds while still allowing for timber harvests.
    "We really think there is room to have logging, and recreation and wildlife corridors intact, and that's what we're really' excited about," said Baker, who was hired in July with funds from private donations and grants from the Harder, Alaska Conservation and Brainerd foundations.
    Talks between the coalition and trust began to move forward. By the fall, the coalition had identified specific areas where it wanted to see conservation measures in place. These areas included about 646 acres around the lakes; a trail corridor along both sides of Leask Creek; about 50 acres in the tract's northwest corner for trail access to the Naha area; about 120 acres Leask Cove for archaeological and watershed purposes, and about 97 acres near Leask Cove and Leask Creek for 'critical deer winter range."
Trust officials said that while the trust wasn't interested in selling the property outright, the coalition could purchase "conservation easements" for areas of interest, according to the coalition.
    Understanding it's appropriate to compensate the trust for loss of potential timber income, the coalition began to plan and raise money, with a target amount of about $1.5 million.
    Working with the Southeast Alaska Land Trust, the coalition applied for grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and a North American Wetlands Conservation Grant. It also began fundraising locally and obtained letters of support from the Assembly, Ketchikan Gateway Borough Planning Commission and the greater Ketchikan Chamber of Commerce.
    Timing has been a critical component. On Nov. 10, the trust issued a request for bids from companies interested in purchasing the marketable timber on the Leask Lakes tract. The trust received two bids, and, in February, announced it would award the contract to A1can.
    The five-year deal provides for a harvest of approximately 60 million board feet of timber, about 22 miles of roadbuilding, and should raise between $6 million and $8 million for the trust.
    The contract provides only part of the conservation measures sought by the coalition.
A buffer zone of 166 feet on both sides of Leask Creek mirrors the coalition’s proposal, and the contract also requires that an area surrounding the lakes maintain its "aesthetics and character, " according to the trust's bid request announcement.
    Eric Nichols, a part-owner of Alcan, said Monday the company plans to harvest timber from about 2,800 acres. About 2,200 acres will be harvested by conventional clear-cuts, while another approximately 580 acres will be selectively logged with helicopters, he said.
    Trust officials met with the coalition on March 2 and 3, saying the conservation easement concept was no longer an option. Instead, the trust offered to sell the entire property to the coalition after the timber harvest and roadbuilding was finished.
The property would be sold at its "residual value," according to the coalition's description of the offer, a value currently estimated at about $3 million. Coalition members say the change of direction took them by surprise.
    "We're feeling a little frustrated at this stage with the trust's sudden change of plans here," said Jack Lee of Ketchikan, who's worked on opening the area for roaded recreation for two decades. "The trust's new plan gives us no assurances that these areas will be preserved."
    Campbell, however, said Thursday the trust's new position resulted from an evolution in thinking over time rather than an abrupt change.
    From the outset, the trust requested the coalition to identify specific parcels of interest and show it possessed financial resources to purchase an interest in the property; said Campbell.
    He said that when the coalition identified its areas of interest, it became clear the coalition was proposing public access in addition to values such as conservation and wildlife habitat.
    However, trust land is managed private land, and the property surrounding the proposed conservation easement areas would remain trust and therefore private property.
    "Our lands are not open to public uses," Campbell said. "That created management concerns for us. There would be opportunities for trespass and other things on what would remain trust lands.”
    The Trust Land Office didn't want to put itself in the position of trying to manage that type of situation, "so, at that point, we came up with the idea of having them purchase it from us," he said.
    The trust remains willing to work with the coalition to expand the selective harvest areas in a land purchase deal, said Campbell.
    But Alcan must be involved with any timber reduction discussion because it's now considered the timber owner - even without a signed contract. The trust's view is the contract became viable in February when the contract award was announced, he said.
"We said in the (November request for proposals that this was the contract, there won't be any substantial changes to it," Campbell said. "Alcan would have to be compensated" if less timber is to be cut.
    Alcan's Nichols said the company is willing to talk about timber reductions, but hasn’t heard how large a reduction might be proposed. The type of compensation Alcan would want depends on the size of the reduction, he said.
    "If it's a minor amount we will work with both groups on that,. Nichols said. "But if it's a large volume I would suggest that we work out some sort of replacement timber volume rather than just straight compensation."
    Replacement timber would be important because Alcan has an on-going customer base that depends on the company for supply, said Nichols.
    Campbell said there's still time to work out a conservation plan for the property because, although Alcan anticipates roadbuilding to start in May, it doesn't expect to do much harvesting this year. It appears that harvests around the lakes area wouldn't start until sometime during the second year of the contract, he said.
    While there might be time, the coalition finds itself in a different situation than a month ago.
    This (the absence of the conservation easement option and the introduction of the land purchase offer changes the coalition's plans a lot, Baker said. We have to step back for a moment ... and figure out what we're going to do with this new proposal."
The most obvious difference is the condition of the property now versus after it's been harvested.
    The reason it throws a wrench in the works for us, said Lee, is it's one thing to find funding for conservation easements or for recreation and habitat property. It’s entirely another thing to find funding for clear-cuts.”
    Diane Mayer, executive director of the non-profit Southeast Alaska Land Trust, agrees with that assessment.
    "As far as fund-raising, I think cutover land makes it much more difficult," Mayer said.
In addition, the cost of restoring land after harvest is usually substantial, said Baker.
She and Baker said they're working on a proposal that still can provide wildlife, recreation and watershed benefits to local users.
    "The key is willing landowners, working with the Mental Health Trust to see if they're willing to sell us something that we're willing to buy, Mayer said, adding that the trust's current sale proposal doesn't meet that criteria.
    "The Mental Health Trust should be aware that folks value this parcel and have been trying to do something mu1tiple-use with this parcel for more than 20 years - and the trust can get some value from that," Baker said. "What we really want to do is compensate the Mental Health Trust for a certain set of values.
    The coalition hopes to submit its proposal within the next "couple of weeks," Baker said. The proposal will contain a dollar amount, probably between $25,000 and $30,000, that the coalition can use for an option payment.
    Campbell said the trust has encouraged the coalition to be "open-minded" and consider additional partners and ways to accomplish its goals for the Leask Lakes tract.
"One of the things we said is to look for sources beyond the (original grant) sources of funding," Campbell said. "There's more than one way to put a deal together."
The trust has some flexibility in that regard, he said.
    For Mayer, whose organization holds seven conservation easements for about 2,500 acres in Southeast Alaska, the effort has shown some original thinking thus far.
"I think the Leask Users Coalition effort is really unique in that it's negotiating a multiple-use (plan) that would realize a benefit to the Mental Health Trust, the logging industry, and the natural area users," Mayer said.
"It's pretty innovative, and perhaps unprecedented. "
E-mail: sbowlen@ketchikandailynews.com

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