If what the committee chooses to do is set this area up as off lim- 

 its to all kinds of activities, then it ought to be honest and up front 

 about it and just pass a new California wilderness bill or introduce 

 one of them. This is a de facto way to back into the same type of 

 management without going through the wilderness process. 



I personally also reject the notion that the best way to manage 

 our forests in California is through this piecemeal, patch something 

 up here, do something over there, tree by tree, species by species 

 method. I think it is creating a very unhealthy forest, and I think 

 passage of this legislation would make that even worse. 



I believe we have to begin to look at our forests in California 

 from a more holistic standpoint, trying to deal with the health of 

 the entire ecosystem, rather than setting up this area here and 

 saying you cannot do this, setting up this area over here and say- 

 ing you cannot do that, and then a corridor between them and say- 

 ing you cannot do anjrthing in that area, as well. It makes no 

 sense, it is extremely frustrating, and it is simply not a good way 

 to manage what is a very important resource. 



Also, I reject the notion that we ought to take the entire land 

 base here and put it off limits to any timber harvesting at all, 

 which is really what this bill is about, and I am not going to defend 

 all the past management practices of the Forest Service with re- 

 spect to timber harvesting. Some of them have been very egregious 

 and ought to be changed. Many of them are being changed under 

 the current management. 



Passing a bill like this is not going to help that process one bit. 

 And unilaterally coming in and saying there is no more timber har- 

 vesting at all in this area is going to be extremely destructive to 

 the communities. 



I respectfully reject Mr. Brown's contention here that we are only 

 talking about a few hundred jobs. We are talking about several 

 thousand jobs. We are talking about whole communities that are 

 devastated when the primary business in town is shut down, we 

 are talking about all the related impacts such as we are already 

 seeing with the rising cost of timber in this country as we face a 

 variety of issues affecting our timber industry, not just the mainte- 

 nance of giant sequoia trees. 



By the Forest Service's reckoning, using the methods set forth by 

 this Congress to determine whether or not there are below-cost 

 sales, there are no below-cost sales in the Sequoia National Forest. 

 That is a moot issue. That is not to say that the Forest Service 

 ought not to improve its management. That is not to say that they 

 have not done things wrong in the past. But I think going about 

 this approach is the wrong way to go. 



I hope in the next weeks to introduce my own legislation in this 

 Congress dealing with forests and their he£dth in California and to 

 deal with it from the standpoint of looking at the entire region, not 

 picking out one area and targeting one particular industry in that 

 area and saying we don't want you doing what you are doing any- 

 more. 



I hope the subcommittee will reject this bill. I hope the sub- 

 committee, however, will stay on top of the issue of managing our 

 forests in California. We need to do a better job than we are. 



Thank you. 



