Tree Lovers Bring Greenery to Desolate Aleutian Isles

It’s just a ragged clump of stunted spruce, but the Adak National Forest is nothing short of inspirational to foresters who dream of covering the desolate Aleutian Islands with trees.

Measuring scarcely 40 feet across, the “forest” consists of 33 trees huddled on a windy hillside near the Adak Naval Air Station. A sign by the road proclaims: “You are now entering and leaving Adak National Forest.”

The trees, none over 17 feet tall, are hardy survivors of a World War II plan to boost the morale of homesick GIs stationed in the Aleutians, one of the world’s longest stretches of unforested land.

Thousands of seedlings were planted along the 1,100-mile island chain, yet few took hold, and fewer still have survived the long winters, cold summers and relentless winds.

So the humble Adak National Forest is a model for hopeful tree lovers who are tending a new crop of seedlings this summer in the Aleutians. This time, they say, they’ll do things right.

“It’s history in the making. One of these days the Aleutians will be forested,” said Richard Tindall of Anchorage, a forestry consultant and volunteer for ReTree International, an Oregon-based group that plants trees around the world.

It’s not as if the Aleutians never had trees. Huge sequoias grew here in the Miocene Epoch, 11 million to 25 million years ago. But volcanic eruptions, a changing climate and grinding glaciers toppled that forest, and the Aleutians have been treeless since the last ice age ended 10,000 years ago. All that is left of the sequoias are petrified trunks, up to 9 feet in diameter, embedded in beaches and cliffs.

Some foresters believe the Aleutians will reforest naturally, give another 50,000 years or so. Since the glaciers’ retreat, Sitka spruce trees have spread from British Columbia, up through southeastern Alaska and around the coast toward the Aleutians.

Studies of pollen in peat bogs show that the spruce reached the northern tip of Kodiak Island and nearby Alaska Peninsula 400 to 500 years ago, said U.S. Forest Service researcher John Alden. Kodiak Island’s southern half is still mostly treeless.

Old-timers in the city of Kodiak remember open fields where the forest now stands. The grassy slopes south of town are dotted with fat little spruce.

But as the forest nears the Aleutians, the march is slowed by dry winds, cool temperatures and thick grass that smothers tree seedlings. Alden figures that the forest now migrates 1 mile per century.

That is not nearly fast enough for some. A lack of trees never seemed to bother the native Aleuts, but the urge to plant has been rooted among newcomers since the first Russian explorers.

Russians planted the first trees in 1805 near the eastern Aleutian village of Unalaska; a few still survive and enjoy National Historic Landmark status.

Whalers, traders and missionaries planted seedlings at settlements scattered along the chain. But it wasn’t until World War II, when lonely soldiers pined for winter greenery, that large-scale plantings were done.

After the war, planting was sporadic. Alden said about 4,000 trees were planted on Adak in 1976 as a bicentennial project, but most died.

Tree planters hope the latest plantings fare better.

The Navy and U.S. Forest Service have spent $30,000 since 1985 trying to find trees suited to Adak. Alden has overseen the planting of nearly 6,000 seedlings, including 120 this spring.

But the federal program’s funding was cut, leaving things up to ReTree International, now in its fourth year of Aleutian plantings. Tindall said 2,000 seedlings will be planted this summer with the help of volunteers in five Aleutian and southwestern Alaska communities.

Not everyone shares Tindall’s preference for trees over native Aleutian grasses and arctic alpine plants.

“There are always those who wonder about bringing in something that isn’t natural,” he said. “But most people understand that the only reason there aren’t trees in a lot of these places is because nature hasn’t had time to come in.”