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designation or change in management regime which preempts the 

 process now established in law for land designations will not have 

 the same factual, scientific and public backing as that which will 

 come from the Tongass Land Management Plan revision. Why not use 

 its alternative land plans as the basis for congressional action? 



It is no secret that HR 987 sets out 23 land areas that 

 were originally requested by the Southeast Alaska Conservation 

 Council (SEACC). There was no process used to select those areas - 

 - they were just areas that the SEACC wanted. There was no debate 

 either in the House Interior Committee or on the floor of the House 

 regarding whether those were good boundaries or bad boundaries. 

 In the absence of Forest Service information, Congress has no way 

 of knowing what was good public policy and what was not. Why 

 should any special interest group's "wish list" be substituted for 

 the process you have told the Forest Service to follow under 

 existing law? 



The Southeast Conference approach is certainly better 

 than SEACC's, yet it, too, should not be substituted for the TLMP 

 revisions. We in the ALA take our hard hats off to the Southeast 

 Conference, because at least they recognize this point. As they 

 have written to you, they would prefer for the TLMP process to go 

 forward. However, they are saying that if Congress preempts the 

 TLMP revision process, that rather than enacting the SEACC "wish 

 list", Congress should use the lands the Southeast Conference is 

 proposing. Unlike SEACC, which is interested in setting aside vast 

 wilderness areas, the Southeast Conference is interested in setting 



