Forested land on the western bank of the Lynn Canal near Haines, July 14, 2025. (Will Steinfeld/Chilkat Valley News)

Proposed changes to Haines State Forest management could roll back restrictions on logging across wide swaths of the Chilkat Valley. But some say economics — not just government regulation — is preventing large-scale logging returning to the area. 

It’s been a half-century since the Chilkat Valley’s timber boom, which spiked in the early 1960s before dropping…

Will Steinfeld is a documentary photographer and reporter in Southeast Alaska, formerly in New England.