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USFS to establish a major timber industry in the region. The TLMP and Section 

 705 represent an ongoing attempt to sustain the timber economy created by 

 those earlier efforts. 



In ANILCA, Congress recognized the inherent tension between logging on 

 the Tongass and other important goals such as the preservation of wilderness, 

 wildlife, and fish resources. Congress further recognized that economic and 

 environmental factors change over time. For these reasons. Section 705(b) of 

 ANILCA requires the USFS to report to Congress by the fifth anniversary of the 

 act, and every two years thereafter, on the status of the Tongass. 



As the 1985 Section 706(b) report conclusively demonstrates. Section 705 

 will continue to result in the taxpayer loses approaching 99 cents on every 

 dollar spent growing and selling trees on the Tongass. Moreover, because the 

 economic assumptions upon which the law was based have proven to be totally in 

 error, it is apparent that the law must be changed to reflect current 

 circumstances and national fiscal priorities. 



Since ANILCA, the agency has had a history of preparing sales without 

 regard to demand. From I98O through 1986, the USFS spent $287 million from 

 its Tongass Timber Supply Fund to put about 2.8-billion board feet of timber 

 on sale. Only about 1.5-billion board feet, or 53 percent, was sold. In 

 fact, while the USFS offered 450-million board feet each each year, the annual 

 average timber harvest from 1980 to 1988 has been only 285 million board feet. 

 Even a recent General Accounting Office report recommends that Congress 

 "revise the 4.5 billion board feet per decade requirement" so that timber 

 goals can be set through the land management process — as they are on every 

 other national forest. 



The USFS should limit the preparation of new sales each year to volumes 

 based on anticipated demand for sale offerings and estimated backlogs of 

 prepared sale offerings. The agency should include estimated backlogs and 

 projected demand levels in the annual supply and demand reports to Congress 

 that are required by ANILCA. The Tongass Timber Reform Act requires the USFS 

 to justify expenditures each year so that the Appropriations Committee can 

 determine the appropriate level of funding. 



The second component of the Tongass Timber Reform Act will put all 

 purchases of timber from Alaska's national forests on an equal footing by 

 terminating 50-year timber sale contracts in the state of Alaska and replacing 

 them with a system of short-terra timber sales used in all other national 

 forests. I believe this bill will return to the USFS full control of 

 management of our nation's largest forest. In addition, this bill will, for 

 the first time, make balanced multiple-use management of the Tongass possible. 



Since the Tongass became a national forest in the early part of the 

 century, the USFS has pursued a unique experiment designed to foster the 

 development of a large-scale pulp mill industry in southeast Alaska. The 

 purpose was to stabilize the local economy, promote industrial expansion, 

 provide local jobs, further the development of the state of Alaska and to 

 settle part of the last frontier. To attract pulp mills to southeast Alaska, 

 a remote and economically forbidding region, the USFS offered unprecedented 

 long-term timber contracts to potential bidders in the 1950's. The terms of 

 these contracts give the purchasers virtually unfettered control over the 



