Leask Lakes
By Sean P. Dougherty
EDITOR, Daily News:
The Leask Lake timber sale is coming up. Some 80 million board feet
of lumber or approximately six to nine square miles of virgin timber,
wetlands and salmon spawning streams are about to be logged off.
As an export sale the impact on the local economy hereabouts will
be hardly noticeable. But the Alaska Mental Health Trust will pocket
a few million and all Ketchikan residents will be left with the
mess.
I just hope that at the very least they leave a broad
corridor of unlogged forest along the salmon stream and the waters
edge on George Inlet. That way if Ketchikan residents gain legal
access to the area, there will be fish to catch and the shelter
form rain that only big trees can provide. A nice outdoor area where
you can get away from Ketchikan for, hiking, hunting and fishing
would be real good for one's mental health.
