Ill 



State of Alaska believes, unfortunately, that it fails to attain the 

 goal of evenhanded management. However, we believe that 

 progress towards this goal is possible. 



As you probably are aware, substantial efforts to reach a compro- 

 mise have been made. Senator Stevens and Senator Murkowski 

 have introduced legislation which we believe is a good faith effort 

 in compromise. 



In an effort to assist the development of a consensus, we offer 

 the following comments on specific provisions of the legislation 

 before you. 



First of all, with regard to the repeal of section 705, which is in 

 your bill, during the ANILCA debate one of the most difficult 

 issues that has been discussed today is how to both create substan- 

 tial amounts of wilderness and preserve timber employment. 



Section 703 designated 5.5 million acres of wilderness, including 

 173,000 acres of high volume timber stands. Section 705 provided 

 the actual appropriation. Since that has been fully discussed, I will 

 not go into that. 



The problem with repealing 705 as we see it is that it would 

 create a great deal of uncertainty in the timber industry, which de- 

 pends upon wood supplies from the Tongass National Forest. 



The principal reason for this is elimination of the 4.5 billion 

 board feet per decade supply goal removes the legislative impetus 

 to provide an amount of timber which could sustain the dependent 

 industry. 



Although we strongly oppose repealing the section, we do believe 

 that it is possible to modify the section to give the Secretary of Ag- 

 riculture greater flexibility in managing the forest. 



For example, last year an amendment was offered on the House 

 side which would have allowed the Secretary to adjust the timber 

 supply for the decade in each provision of the forest plan based 

 upon his projection of the market demand for Federal timber. 

 These are the kinds of approaches that we think may be workable. 



The second element of your bill which I would like to focus on is 

 the contract termination. You have heard at length that the long- 

 term contracts were one of the principal elements of the Federal 

 Government's efforts to establish a timber industry in southeast 

 Alaska. 



We believe that cancellation of the contracts could significantly 

 disrupt the economies of a number of communities in southeast, 

 and we strongly oppose cancelling the long-term contracts. If the 

 committee perceives there to be problems with the long-term con- 

 tracts, it would be much more acceptable to the state for the Con- 

 gress to instruct the Forest Service to renegotiate elements of the 

 contracts with the two pulp companies. 



The next provision I would like to talk about is the moratorium 

 provision. I would like to start off by saying that the state recog- 

 nizes the higher value of several of these areas as fish and wildlife 

 habitat and their importance to the fishing and tourism industries, 

 subsistence users, and a number of communities in southeast 

 Alaska. 



The principal question regarding this title is whether additional 

 temporary production can be provided to these areas without 

 having an unacceptable impact on the ongoing operation of the 



