Representatives from the University of Alaska Land Management department visited Haines last week to consider how to earn a profit from the 12,000 acres they own in the borough.
The university paused its planned timber sale in 2019 after tariff changes rendered the deal unprofitable. Now department liaison Kirsten Henning said they are weighing options including a smaller-scale timber project with local operators and joining a carbon credit program.
Henning and three other department representatives stayed in town from Monday to Thursday, following up on a trip they made in May. Outside of the time the team spent in the field evaluating the university’s land holdings, they also held open coffee meetings at Mountain Market and Rusty Compass to solicit community feedback.
“We want everyone to feel included, especially in small towns,” Henning said. She said they encountered advocates for both logging and carbon sequestration. “We hear a lot about the need for responding to climate change and preserving the trail system, but we also hear a lot about stimulating the local economy,” she said. She said they understand that the larger timber project would have brought a lot of jobs to Haines.
If it moved forward with a carbon credit option, the university would be following in the steps of the Sealaska Corporation, which also halted its timber operations in 2019. Carbon sequestration is fairly new to Alaska, Henning said, but it’s growing in popularity. The university would agree to keep a certain amount of old growth timber unharvested, and then they would sell so-called “carbon credits” to carbon brokers. The brokers would sell those credits to companies that want to offset their emissions.
The carbon program and a logging operation wouldn’t necessarily be mutually exclusive; the university might designate some of its land for one use and some for another. Henning said a small-scale timber project could still be profitable for the university even though large-scale logging no longer makes financial sense. Using local operators would help reduce costs, and so would possible collaboration with DNR, whose Ski Hill timber project is adjacent to some university land. Haines Borough planner Dave Long speculated that the two projects might be able to share access roads, for example.
Long also said he talked with the UA reps about the possibility of exploring residential development near 26 mile in conjunction with logging. The university would have to build a road system for any logging operation, he said, and then they could consider transitioning that into a development once the project was complete.
Henning said another important component of the trip was meetings with the Chilkoot Indian Association (CIA) and Chilkat Indian Village in Klukwan.
CIA administrator Harriet Brouillette said CIA “can get behind” either the logging or the carbon program. She said she thinks neither project would not be “invasive” and both would be beneficial.
Brouillette also said she and the university representatives discussed the possibility of a land swap down the line. CIA is one of five “landless” indigenous communities in Southeast Alaska, though she and other native leaders have been lobbying for an amendment to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act to remedy that oversight. Even if the bill passes in Washington, however, CIA would not have any land choices around Haines, so a swap with the university would be one way the tribe could get land closer to home.
In an email to the CVN, Henning said the University has not previously exchanged land with tribal entities to other groups, but they are open to the possibility. “If there is a way to partner or collaborate together in the community, while still meeting our fiduciary role in generating revenue for the Land Grant Trust Fund, we want to explore it,” she wrote.
The University of Alaska was granted 150,000 acres statewide in 1915. It profits from this land in various ways — from oil and gas projects to subdivisions to land sales — and the revenue, about $7 million a year, supports the top ten percent of Alaska high school students through the UA Scholars program.
Eight percent of the holdings are in the Haines Borough, stretching across the Chilkat Valley.