Alaska Mental Health Trust and USFS land exchange bill introduced in Juneau this week

The bill giving the green light to an exchange of thousands of acres of land between the Alaska Mental Health Trust and the U.S. Forest Service

was introduced in Juneau this week.

Rep. Dan Ortiz, I-Ketchikan, filed House Bill 155 on Monday. It authorizes the trust to go ahead with an exchange of more than 17,000 acres of trust land for 20,000 acres of rural Forest Service timber land.

In the process, the exchange would eliminate the possibility of logging on trust-owned land on Deer Mountain and above the Mitkof Highway in Petersburg. Those tracts would be given to the Forest Service and would...