HOONAH, Alaska -- "Used to witnessing tidewater glaciers, and watching humpback whales cavort in Icy Strait, cruise ship passengers get a different Alaska vista when docking outside this Tlingit village of 800 people west of Juneau. A vast clearcut, rising almost from the shoreline, covers the mountainside across the bay. Miles of cutover lands can be seen looking up neighboring valleys of Chichagof Island.
"We had a petition with 188 signatures against logging over there," said Floyd Peterson, a fishing guide and Tlingit who has lived in Hoonah for 61 years, gazing out his living room window at the clearcut. "They just ignored the petition," he added. "They never acknowledged it. The next year they wiped out the forest. ... They're through now. They're outta here. There's nothing left."
The old-growth forests were cut down by native-owned corporations of which Hoonah residents are shareholders. One is Huna Totem, the local village corporation, the other the Sealaska Corp., the regional corporation for southeast Alaska. Over the past two decades, the corporations -- created under the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act -- have razed an estimated 248,000 acres of old growth, most of it in southeast Alaska. "They cut the most beautiful lumber you ever saw. They could have had a local industry forever," said John Erickson of Tok River Outfitters, a renowned bear hunting guide. With the village's forests stripped, Huna Totem has turned to one Alaskan industry that is fueled by the state's natural beauty -- and which doesn't strip away a resource and then leave. The native corporation is playing host to Celebrity and Royal Caribbean cruise ships making port calls at a converted cannery north of town. Passengers get an option of 10 shore excursions.
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It's perhaps best for visitors' enjoyment that Peterson stays on the water. When he drives inland, the waste and long-term consequences of Hoonah's years of clearcutting make even the casual visitor very sad and very mad. Huge piles of wood have been left on the ground to rot. Only the tiniest strips of forest have been left along salmon streams. Erosion from logging roads leaves cat-scratch scars down mountainsides. "All this timber was exported in the round for Asia. It didn't sustain jobs here," said Peterson."
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