Kenai Logging Boom Ends - Beetle-Killed Harvest Wrapping Up

[hatrack]

The shutdown of a wood chip operation in Homer this month marks the end of a decade-long logging boom on the Kenai Peninsula that was partly fueled by an epidemic of tree-killing spruce bark beetles. Gates Construction, which runs the Homer Spit operation, has told the city of Homer it's closing up shop due to poor markets and dwindling supplies of salable trees.

A last wood chip ship is due into Kachemak Bay on Jan. 18. Round logs remaining on the Spit will be shipped out in a special load to Korea at the end of the month, city officials said.

The closure brings to an end a boom on the western peninsula that began in 1992 because of high timber prices and accelerated over the next 10 years to harvest trees killed by the bark-beetle infestation.

EDIT

About one-quarter of the land has been replanted with seedlings, thanks in part to federal reforestation aid. Much of the rest has filled in with tall grass and was exempt from reforestation requirements because loggers were "salvaging" dead and dying trees. The logging industry on the Kenai Peninsula will probably go back to what it once was, Peterson said - small local operators cutting for local use. Spruce trees replanted now won't be ready to harvest until the end of the century. "Maybe our grandkids will cut them," Peterson said."

EDIT/END

[roguevalley]

1. The beetle kill is unbelievable. The drive to Homer is so different.

Global warming, folks.