I can only address some of Dave Werner’s assertions (CVN 3/30/17) in the space allowed.
As Dave says, evergreens shade out competitors. Studies by ADF&G biologists three decades ago (Deer and Logging: A Clearcut Dilemma) showed that after clearcutting comes an initial burst of deciduous shrubs, beneficial to wildlife. But then the second-growth canopy closes out light, creating a biological desert. That’s why no one goes hunting in 40, 60, or 100-year-old second-growth! In Southeast Alaska, unlike coastal forests further south, very heavy snowfall in some years makes new clearcuts unusable to deer and other wildlife. Tongass Land Management Plan Revisions emphasize the need for old-growth to provide cover and browse for deer.
Regarding “disease-free, healthy trees,” the old myth of vigorous second-growth has been laid to rest. A study of 700,000 trees on every continent found old trees with trunks three feet in diameter generated three times as much biomass as trees half that size. (Becky Oskin, “Old Trees Grow Faster than Young Ones”: Huffpost Science 1/16/14; “Rate of Tree Carbon Accumulation Increases Continuously with Tree Size,” Nature 3/6/14.)
Beaver ponds are not the same kind of “flooding” as the scouring, silt-laden runoff that occurs when too much old-growth is cut; they actually help control that. They create great salmon rearing habitat and willow browse for moose.
Finally, given Alaska’s fiscal crisis, there is little benefit to spending $9 to every dollar received to export raw logs that could keep locals employed for years. Eric Holle