Alaska Timber Collective

🎉 500 Followers! Thank You! 🌲

What started as a simple idea—to give Alaska’s timber workers, families, and supporters a voice—has grown into a community of 500 people who care about the future of Alaska’s timber industry. Our posts have been shared by commissioners, political pages and, more importantly, YOU!

Thank you for following, sharing, asking questions, and being part of respectful conversations about forestry, jobs, stewardship, and the communities that depend on working forests.

Please keep inviting others to join the conversation, share our posts, and help us tell the story of Alaska’s timber industry.

Here’s to the next 500!

Sustainable forestry is a long-term commitment. Active forest management look decades into the future and incorporate research and guidance from experts to ensure forests remain healthy, abundant & resilient for society's needs & the long-term sustainability of our forests.

Pic: Washington Working Forests

A lot of people genuinely want to see the timber industry succeed again in Southeast Alaska. We hear it all the time: How do we bring it back? How do we keep our current industry intact and make room for growth?

The reality is that restarting a timber industry isn’t as simple as awarding more timber sales. Before it can happen, we have to address some very real operational challenges:

• Skilled labor storage: fallers, yarder crews, millwrights, graders, mechanics, and heavy equipment operators are in short supply.

• Transportation: The tugboats and log barges that once moved timber throughout Southeast Alaska are largely gone or committed elsewhere.

• Many Log Transfer Facilities (LTFs) have been decommissioned, lost permits, fallen into disrepair, or no longer exist.

• Critical industrial infrastructure has disappeared—roads, camps, rock pits, fuel depots, maintenance shops, and equipment spreads all require significant investment to rebuild.

• Federal and state permitting for new roads and LTFs can take years, creating major delays before a single log is harvested.

• Concepts like the “spoke-and-wheel” system sound promising on paper, but in practice they require multiple fully staffed logging crews, equipment spreads, and marine logistics chains that simply don’t exist today.

These aren’t political talking points—they’re the practical bottlenecks that anyone serious about rebuilding Southeast Alaska’s timber industry has to solve.

So here’s the question: What are the best ideas to overcome these challenges? Workforce development? Public-private partnerships? Infrastructure grants? Regulatory reform? Long-term timber certainty?

Let’s have a conversation focused on solutions. If we’re serious about bringing family-wage timber jobs back to Southeast Alaska, we need practical answers—not just good intentions.

People often ask why some logs are exported.

The answer is simple.

Not every log is suitable for domestic sawmills.

Export markets purchase logs that otherwise have limited domestic demand, helping support logging jobs while allowing local mills to focus on producing high-value products.

If we lived on a road system we’d have the ability to transport the low-grade small logs to a chipping plant. Alaska has to do things differently because of our location.

Every timber sale begins years before a tree is harvested.

Foresters inventory stands, survey wildlife, analyze streams, evaluate soils, complete environmental reviews, receive public comment, and follow federal and state laws before operations begin.

Responsible forestry starts with planning.

Did you know your tax dollars are paying for frivolous litigation that pays out these non-profits?!? Whether the special interest groups win, lose or settle, YOU PAY.

For decades, we’ve watched conversations about Alaska’s forests happen without hearing from the people who actually work in them.

Alaska Timber Collective was created to change that.

This page is a volunteer-driven effort to give a voice to the loggers, truck drivers, mill workers, mechanics, foresters, mariners, contractors, and families who make up Alaska’s timber industry. We’re here to share facts, tell the stories of the people behind the industry, celebrate the craftsmanship of working with wood, and provide a perspective that is often missing from public conversations.

Whether you work in forestry, support local manufacturing, or simply want to learn more about responsible forest management, you’re welcome here.

How you can help:
🌲 Follow the page.
🌲 Like and share our posts to help others see them.
🌲 Invite friends and family to follow.
🌲 Share your photos and stories from Alaska’s forests and mills.
🌲 Ask questions—we’ll do our best to answer them with facts and respect.
🌲 Keep the conversation civil, even when opinions differ.

Every share helps tell the story of an industry that has supported Alaska’s communities for generations.

Together, we can ensure the voices of Alaska’s timber workers are part of the conversation about the future of our forests.

Photo: Jackson Stuart

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“I support Alaska forestry because ______.”