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informal work by the States and their delegations predates 

 proposals. When I was Chairman, I did not wake up in the morning 

 and decide that I wanted to get Senator Johnston' s attention, so 

 I would designate all the land I could in Louisiana as 

 wilderness. If there are federal lands in Alaska which should be 

 managed differently, then let the planning process work and let 

 us respect the political process as well and defer to the 

 delegation. Great Smokies Wilderness is just one example. 



The Tennessee delegation could have had wilderness designation 

 for the Tennessee portion any time it wanted. They insisted, 

 however, on designations in North Carolina and agreement between 

 the Senators representing that State could not be reached. The 

 Senate acted properly and deferred action until both delegations 

 could reach an agreement. Despite very serious misgivings, I 

 have deferred to the Nevada delegation on wilderness and the 

 Washington State delegation on North Cascades Wilderness on the 

 subject of preemption of State law on water rights. Those were 

 and are very serious concerns, but I deferred to the delegations. 

 I see absolutely no justification for not deferring to the 

 delegation from Alaska on fundamental land management decisions 

 and to completely end run both the agency planning process and 

 the basic local political process. 



To date, there have been no public hearings on additional Tongass 

 wilderness, no public forum, no opportunity to consider what 

 Alaskans desire other than the revised planning process that the 



