A dozen or more tree trunks are planted in the muck adjoining the Haines Highway near 13 Mile. Intended as eagle perches, the arrangements have drawn questions and criticism.
Stands of dead tree trunks planted along Haines Highway have befuddled Alaska Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve Advisory Council members worried about the aesthetic value of the national scenic byway that runs through the preserve.
State and federal officials say the trees were installed as eagle perches to replace live cottonwood trees felled during highway construction.
But employees at four different agencies involved with the project were unable to explain who designed them and why they were planted where they are – packed tightly together, in the water in one place but next to a dry slough in another.
“Those stumps are the ugliest things I’ve seen in my lifetime driving up and down that road for 75 years,” preserve advisory council member Bill Thomas said at a meeting last month. Council members last fall requested Alaska Department of Transportation to trim or remove the trees but those changes haven’t been made.
There are more than 175 planted, upright tree trunks at nine sites along the Chilkat River between 13 Mile and 16 Mile Haines Highway. Spaced about six feet apart, most of them extend 10 to 12 feet out of water in sloughs or jut up from the adjacent gravel shoreline.
At a single site near 16 Mile, more than 40 of them straddle the roadside, some bent and at odd angles, resembling perhaps a bizarre and unexplained art installation.
The highway is undergoing construction between 12.2 Mile and 20 Mile as part of a multi-year project to widen and straighten the road and up the speed limit, among other objectives.
Alaska Department of Transportation spokesperson Sam Dapcevich said the perches are part of the project’s riverbank reconstruction work, which is projected to cost over $700,000. To date, DOT has spent $400,000 on that work, which is not limited to planting the dead trees, he said.
DOT construction project manager John Kajdan said putting “woody debris” in or near the river to replace lost habitat was required by a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) bald eagle disturbance permit.
One of the Service’s main concerns with the highway project, when it was proposed, was the removal of cottonwood trees where eagles perch while fishing in the river, said Fish and Wildlife Service raptor biologist Steve Lewis.
He added that the primary area of concern, though, was the Council Grounds, between 19 Mile and 22 Mile, where eagles congregate in November to feed on a late salmon run.
DOT’s 2016 finding of no significant impact for the project said “to minimize harm and mitigate for impacts to bald eagles and their habitat DOT&PF would… place construction-removed trees in sections of the Chilkat River to mimic eagle perches on naturally fallen trees.”
But Kajdan said he wasn’t sure who designed the upright trees or decided where to locate them. The design was finalized and put into the plan before he started working on the project, he said. He noted that two state environmental analysts who advised the department in the early stages of the highway project resigned in the last two years.
Alaska State Parks Southeast area superintendent Preston Kroes, who oversees the eagle preserve but not DOT’s right-of-way for the highway, also said he wasn’t sure where the design came from.
He said USFWS requested installing replacement roosting poles or trees but “as far as I’m aware, we were never really given any specific details on how they were going to accomplish that until they were getting done.”
USFWS biologist Lewis told the CVN the federal permit didn’t specify how to replace lost eagle habitat but only to “introduce new cottonwood plantings and woody debris at or near water surface adjacent to the highway embankment as practicable.”
Lewis said FWS didn’t specifically design or suggest planting the tree trunks and that the agency’s permit gives DOT some flexibility in devising habitat replacement features.
“How that design came up I actually don’t know,” he said. “To the best of my knowledge, we did not go down and say, ‘Thou shalt plant trees here, here, here and here.'”
Alaska Department of Fish and Game also “was never a proponent for having those really tall trees” said Fish and Game Habitat Section regional manager Kate Kanouse at the May council meeting.
Lewis suspects that “a little bit of a telephone game” led to installation of the trunks.
Several agencies were at the table to discuss possible environmental impacts of the road projects and mitigation measures, Lewis said. Suggestions might have been “told to someone else and someone else and someone else and next thing you know a lot of stumps are being placed and not necessarily serving the (initial) intention.”
Still, even if the trees are visually jarring, Lewis said they might be functioning as eagle perches. “It’s not like they’re a bad thing (for eagles). Whether it’s a dead tree, a live tree, a telephone pole, a cell tower, (eagles) just need something to perch on.”
At an eagle preserve council meeting last fall, Thomas asked DOT to trim or remove the trees to preserve the highway’s visual appeal. At last month’s meeting, Kroes said he had passed the request along to DOT.
Dapcevich said in an email that the trees have not been modified and noted the project is not finished. He said it “changes daily” with realignments and fills.
One of Thomas’ complaints was that some of the trees were planted next to a dry slough near 15 Mile.
Kanouse said at the meeting that some of the trees have been moved as the river changed its course and that she would follow up with DOT about trimming the trees.
Lewis told the CVN ideally the trees would be along the river, near salmon spawning grounds, where the eagles forage. He said the best way to replace habitat is to plant live cottonwood trees, but that even dead trunks could function as eagle perches. “It’s not like they’re a bad thing (for eagles). Whether it’s a dead tree, a live tree, a telephone pole, a cell tower, (eagles) just need something to perch on.”
The artificial perches were placed on the road’s riverside rather than mountainside to reduce potential collisions with cars.
Dapcevich said other habitat work for the highway project includes culverts to aid fish passage where the road crosses fish streams, riprap to break up flow along the riverbank and efforts during construction to prevent sediment discharge.