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logging level would tie the Forest Service's hands and cause the loss of traditional 

 subsistence areas. Over 80% of mral Southeast Alaskans engage in subsistence hunting, fishing, 

 or gathering ' Under ANILCA, federal actions are to have the least adverse impact possible on 

 subsistence But the Forest Service has gone so far as to develop a boilerplate disclaimer 

 describing the fact that subsistence resources may be impacted, but that the agency has no choice 

 but to do so because of its timber commitments Extending the contract and mandating a higher 

 KPC cut, as the bills do, will harm subsistence uses 



The bill will prevent the development of a modern, high-value-added, secondary-processing 



timber industry based on the free market by keeping log prices artificially low and 



hindering independent operators from getting a timber supply. 



The new contract will prevent competition for logs and give L-P enormous price breaks, keeping 

 the price of logs artificially low This both cheats American taxpayers out of a fair return on their 

 resources and diminishes any incentive to add value through additional manufacturing 



Between 1992 and 1995, the Forest Service emptied the independent sale pipeline to give 

 independent sales to KPC under its contract The Forest Service transferred six sales comprising 

 190 mmbf of independent sales to KPC With a new KPC contract, independent operators 

 will continue to be second-class citizens. 



Case in Point: the Control Lake/Honker Divide timber sale . The Control Lake/Honker 

 Divide timber sale on Prince of Wales Island is not within KPC's "primary sale area," and as such 

 is available for independent operators It includes the region known as Honker Divide, one of the 

 most important wildlife habitat watersheds in the Tongass, with critical habitat for wolves, four 

 species of Pacific Salmon, an internationally known run of steeihead trout, and an outstanding 

 wilderness canoe route Conservationists, independent timber operators, Alaska Natives, 

 biologists, and other area residents collaborated to propose a 40 mmbf timber sale that would 

 have constituted the largest independent timber sale on the Ketchikan Administrative Area, and 

 would also have stayed out of Honker Divide But driven by demands of the KPC contract, the 

 Forest Service has made clear that it will very likely give this sale to KPC, and cut a much higher 

 amount of timber (the agency's draft preferred alternative contained 182 mmbf) from the area 

 This will take timber away from independents and harm Honker Divide at the same time. With its 

 higher mandated cutting level, a new KPC contract raises the likelihood of ftirther cutting in this 

 sensitive area 



While this bill goes way beyond a contract "extension," a 15-vear KPC contract extension 



by itself would be devastating for the Tongass . The leverage provided by a long-term 



contract makes it extremely difTicult to gain fair consideration for other resources that 



would be harmed by logging —even when that logging would violate the law. 



'William Alves, Residents and Resources: Findings of the Alaska Public Survey on the Importance of Natural 

 Resources to the Quality of Life of Southeast Alaska Anchorage, AK: Institute of Social and Economic Research, 

 University of Alaska, 1979alV-4 



