87 



the extreme preservations groups of this nation. They have no fac- 

 tual information to back up their legislation at all. 



As Senator Murkowski has said about figures, sixteen and a half 

 million acres, already five and half million acres of wilderness and 

 the last rain forest, we talk about cutting 4.5 billion board feet over 

 a decade. 



My good Chairman, if you will recognize what is being cut in 

 Washington and California, they cut 4.5 billion a year. If you go 

 right down across our borders to Canada, they are putting in four 

 new pulp mills in a rain forest. They are subsidizing those mills. 



I am not saying what they are doing is correct. What I am 

 saying, we are not harvesting the Tongass as we are being accused 

 of in the Sports Illustrated Magazine, which knows nothing about 

 timber, let alone swimsuits. 



The second thing I may suggest, we are talking about American 

 people, communities that have bonded themselves. As Senator 

 Murkowski has said before, when there was a market downturn, 

 those mills did not close. 



I have had the privilege over my life of going to areas where 

 mills have closed because of economic reasons where we have ghost 

 towns such as Westwood, California. There are sixteen mills that 

 have been closed in Washington, even with the cut they have. We 

 are supposed to have five mills in southeast Alaska, and we have 

 two. 



What we were asking in 1980 at that time was to have a sus- 

 tained yield of 4.5 billion to keep our communities solvent and 

 stable and provide the opportunity for the young people of Alaska 

 in that area. I think this is what this committee has to have, the 

 facts and not the emotionalism. Look at what is occurring and do 

 go to Alaska, but when you go to Alaska, do not do what some 

 people do, because if you are not exposed to the timber practices 

 and the timber industry itself and the natural reforestation, when 

 you first see a cut, you will say my lord, it looks like I look after I 

 have shaved after a bad night the next morning. 



Let us look at the timber as it is after it has been harvested for a 

 period of time and see the regrowth factor and the new timber that 

 is being reproduced. Let us look at the mill as a total user of a tree, 

 not as a detriment to the forest in southeast Alaska. 



Let us look, yes, at the community of the environment in south- 

 east Alaska. They do not support Mr. Wirth's bill. They do not sup- 

 port Mr. Mrazek's bill. This is the environmental community of 

 southeast Alaska. 



They want, in fact, some area set aside to protect their communi- 

 ties, and I can understand that. They want to make sure the 

 spawning streams are set aside and, yes, I can understand that. 

 However, they recognize the importance of that economic spoke of 

 the timber industry in southeast Alaska. 



What the Senator has done from Colorado is an extreme step, 

 which would take and remove Alaskan people from supposedly the 

 last rain forest, as promoted by the East Coast environmental com- 

 munity, which is wrong. It is unjust, it is incorrect, and I am sug- 

 gesting to this committee that we have a long way to go. 



My main goal in the House as the only Congressman from 

 Alaska — and I have, very frankly, a big job cut out — I am going to 



