50 



But I would like to, for the record, introduce myself. I am Jerry 

 Mackie. I am a State representative. I represent 37 communities 

 from Prince of Wales to Metlakatla to Yakutat in the State House 

 and have done so for the last six years. I currently also serve as 

 the Democrat leader of the House of Representatives. 



90 percent of the Tongass, Congressman, is in my district, and 

 I also feel frustration a lot of times at the State level by Federal 

 policies and mandates that come down. 



The district I represent is very diverse. We have a timber indus- 

 try. We have a fishing industry, which has been there forever. We 

 have got different Native tribes and subsistence issues. We have 

 got some tourism, and my district is very, very diverse and does 

 not have any other jobs other than natural resource jobs. 



I strongly believe that we are a natural resource State and that 

 we should manage our resources and we should manage them here 

 at home. I do not know all of the details in terms of your legisla- 

 tion. Congressman, and I am interested in seeing some of the fi- 

 nancial information that would take place in terms of the State 

 having to manage the Tongass and so forth. I have not had an op- 

 portunity to review that, but in terms of the concept of what you 

 are trying to accomplish, here, I support it, and I will tell you why. 



The people that I represent throughout the Tongass a lot of times 

 have very little to say about what happens with their jobs and 

 what happens with the economics. A lot of those decisions are 

 made in Congress and in Washington, D.C., through heavy lobby- 

 ing efforts and influence from organizations outside of the State of 

 Alaska by people that do not live here, and that comes in the form 

 of management decisions to court injunctions and so on and so 

 forth. That has me greatly concerned. 



The reason I know that — I think that we could do the job here 

 in Alaska — and I do not necessarily have a bone to pick with the 

 Forest Service or the personnel that are locally trying to manage 

 the forest. I do have a problem with what comes out of D.C., as you 

 indicated earlier on, but the reason that I think that it could be 

 done is — we will use the KPC contract for an example. I strongly 

 advocated for that contract extension and worked in the legislature 

 to try to build consensus and find language and address some of 

 the issues that we believed addressed all the concerns here at 

 home, and we talked about the need to protect habitat, and I do 

 not know of anyone that wants to clearcut the Tongass from one 

 end to the other, but we do need to have the jobs in the timber in- 

 dustry, as well as fishing and others, and I think that when that 

 final vote came down — and there was all but three people in the 

 legislature, including Governor Knowles, that supported that — that 

 was an example of how we can work together here at home and 

 have people's views being dealt with by people that are elected lo- 

 cally here at home. So I do believe that will work. 



There are many issues certainly in the Tongass that go unre- 

 solved. A lot of the subsistence issues remain unresolved. There are 

 lots of concerns, concerns even that I have about habitat areas and 

 other things, that we protect our environment at the same time 

 that we manage our timber industry and provide the jobs for our 

 families to survive. 



