14 



Senator Bumpers. Senator McClure, do you have an opening 

 statement? 



STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES A. McCLURE, U.S. SENATOR FROM 



IDAHO 



Senator McClure. I will be very brief, Mr. Chairman. 



I was a member of this committee during consideration of the 

 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in the late 1970s. 

 The Tongass timber controversy is certainly not a new issue to me. 



We are now being asked to reconsider a bipartisan compromise 

 which eliminated one of the last remaining obstacles to the passage 

 of the Alaska Lands Bill. The compromise was a balance between 

 the needs of the Tongass timber industry and the demands of the 

 environmental organizations for wilderness designations. 



After lengthy debate and negotiation by all concerned parties, 

 Congress through ANILCA not only sought but in fact designated 

 over 5 million acres of the Tongass as wilderness. In exchange, Sec- 

 tion 705A of ANILCA was created to provide the timber industry 

 with a viable market, guaranteeing that 4.5 billion board feet of 

 timber would be made available to dependent industry every 10 

 years. 



Additionally, the Tongass Timber Supply Fund was established 

 to assure availability of economically viable timber. Only 10 per- 

 cent of the Tongass National Forest is scheduled to be logged over 

 the next 100 years. That works out to about one tenth of 1 percent 

 of the Tongass per year. 



Far from destroying the Tongass National Forest, I believe a case 

 can be made that the Forest Service has been improving the 

 timber, fish, wildlife and community stability of Southeast Alaska. 

 There may be a need to fine-tune the management process to 

 ensure federal funding is not being wasted, but revisiting provi- 

 sions of ANILCA is not necessarily the best way to proceed. 



I strongly support the maintenance of future opportunities to ex- 

 plore and develop Alaska's vast natural resources. This is especial- 

 ly true with regard to a situation like Tongass, where specific com- 

 promise legislation was adopted as a pledge to the people of South- 

 east Alaska. 



I truly appreciate the efforts of both Senator Murkowski and 

 Senator Stevens toward resolution of this controversial issue. Adop- 

 tion of their bill would place us in a better position to exercise 

 proper oversight functions on the Tongass. 



Use of the Tongass National Forest resources is recognized in 

 government contract law: the Alaska National Interest Lands Con- 

 servation Act and the National Forest Management Act. Each of 

 these provides the ways and means to appropriately identify the 

 necessary changes required by Tongass management. 



Finally, Mr. Chairman, although I know there have been sever- 

 al — perhaps dozens — of articles written. In my judgment, many of 

 these contain errors of fact, and perhaps this one does too, but I 

 want to call the attention of the committee and others to a very 

 new publication, called "Our Land." 



It is the opening publication of a new organization that features, 

 among other articles, one called "Myths of the Tongass", and after 



