30 



ing — actually, it was before that, I think. 160 is the number I have 

 heard, but it was actually logged by the Russians. You can go up 

 there today and walk in it, and it is still not back to old growth. 

 You have got probably another hundred years to go, there, before 

 that. 



And that woman who has been mentioned from New York, she 

 may well have been more informed than our own local leaders 

 here. In talking with Keith about these issues a year or so ago, 

 Keith has hardly been beyond the end of the road. He does not 

 know the forest in our own borough. This is the largest borough of 

 the United States, with 3 million acres, yet our own leaders do not 

 have enough knowledge of the borough to manage it wisely. But 

 back to the bill. 



The bill is a transparent attempt to do away with the hundred- 

 foot Federal stream-side buffers, which should be and I think even- 

 tually will be set at a wider minimum. It is an attempt to reduce 

 them to the State of Alaska's inadequate 66-foot buffers, which are 

 commonly pillaged by means of easily obtained waivers for logging. 

 This bill is a transparent attempt to give away lands that protect 

 multiple uses of the forest from the single-use logging that has the 

 capacity to destroy most of these other uses, and this bill is an at- 

 tempt to resurrect a dinosaur that is better left dead, the Alaska 

 Pulp contract. 



The saddest thing, I think, though, about this bill is that the 

 premise it is based on is completely faulty. Mr. Young, for 20 years, 

 now, you and Senator Stevens and the industry and now the junior 

 senator from Alaska, who has not been there quite that long, have 

 been saying, "We are only going to log 10 percent of the Tongass 

 National Forest." 



You ignore that this word, forest, when applied to this land area, 

 is a misnomer. 41 percent of the Tongass is not forested. Another 

 25 percent is scrub timber that has no commercial value or little 

 wildlife value. You have never addressed this, and you have never 

 allowed this to become a real debate even when it is raised by 

 those on our side of the issue. 



Of the remaining one-third of the Tongass, you stated in the pub- 

 lic radio interview on Alaska Coast-to-Coast on Valentine's Day 

 that those who know the high-board-feet areas have set them aside 

 already. In fact, though, of the highest-volume forest, only 15 per- 

 cent has been protected, while half has been logged. The practice 

 of logging the best and then the best of the rest continues to this 

 day. And you would like it to continue in even a bigger way, I 

 think, by making this transfer happen. 



On the Floor of the House last December, you said "15 million 

 acres of the Tongass is off limits to logging" . . . "15 million acres 

 of rain forest" ... 15 million acres of those great old trees." If you 

 truly believe that this 15 million acres, the bulk of the Tongass, is 

 rain forest, when 40 percent is not even forested, then we need a 

 new Chairman of the House "Natural" Resources Committee. 



If you believe that this 15 million acres is "great old trees," when 

 25 percent of it is scrub timber, which is little more than 

 shrubbery, in addition to the nonforested 40 percent — we are talk- 

 ing, here, two-thirds of the whole Tongass — then Alaska needs a 

 new congressman. 



