As oil prices continue to rise and as Sitka’s electric demand approaches the supply limits, many Sitkan’s are looking for alternative options for home heating.  Across the board, everyone is choosing some sort of “dual-fuel” heating system that can use electricity when there is an ample supply and an alterative when hydro-electric sources are stretched thin.             
    More often, home owners are choosing wood heating as a carbon-neutral option that takes advantage of local resources.  Choosing a wood burning stove can be difficult.  The following article outlines the experiences of some of our members and what they learned as they choose a stove for their home: 

Click here to read the article

The Tongass Forest Plan Amendment Record of Decision, Final Forest Plan and Final EIS have been released

    On the day after Valentine’s Day, February 15^th, 2008, the Bush administration officially released the new Tongass Land Management Plan (TLMP) as a belated token of affection to the timber industry.  The new TLMP opens up 3.4 million acres to logging and mining.  Nearly two-thirds of those acres are now roadless and timber extraction in those areas will require generous public road construction subsidies in order to generate raw log exports for mills in the lower 48 and in Asia.  The outgoing administration proposes to extract up to 267 million board feet of timber per year - about six times the amount that timber operators have been willing to purchase annually since the turn of the century.  

    Although this new plan generously bestows affection on the timber industry, it leaves other users of forest resources broken-hearted by compromising recreational, educational, fisheries, subsistence and wildlife values.  The Sitka Community Use Area will face further loss of winter deer habitat and further degradation of important salmon habitat.  The Sitka Conservation Society will file an administrative appeal of this new plan in order to encourage the Forest Service to develop a plan that meets the real needs of Tongass National Forest users in the 21^st century – a plan that prioritizes restoration and allows for the maintenance and growth of the region’s key economic sectors:  subsistence, fisheries and outdoor recreation and tourism.  

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With the Groundtruthing Project, we are staying at the leading edge of critical Tongass conservation issues.  We spent the first two years of the project focusing on old growth timber projects and collecting data to challenge upcoming sales.  In 2007 we set out to learn what it would take to repair the ecological damage caused by a half-century of industrial, clear-cut logging.  We spent the 2007 season focusing on the future of the Tongass by evaluating restoration and second-growth management projects. 

Click here  to see our 2007 field reports.

This past summer SCS collaborated with the City of Sitka’s Electrical Department to host an energy conservation intern who developed 6 brochures on how Sitkan’s can reduce their energy consumption and reduce their overall carbon emissions.

Click here to link to the brochures