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15-20 years, an extremely dense stand of small trees grows up to block light 

 from reaching the forest floor and results in virtually no browse growing 

 under these tight thickets for the next 100 years. Since present Forest 

 Service management calls for Tongass forests to be harvested at 100 year 

 rotations, the result is permanent loss of deer habitat. Second-growth 

 forests will account for 75-80% of the managed forest land in the Tongass at 

 the end of the first 100 year rotation. By then one-half of the now critical 

 available deer winter habitat will be permanently converted to managed second- 

 growth and therefore lost. Deer populations will be severely reduced and even 

 eliminated from certain places. Rural Alaskans who depend on venison for 

 subsistence plus sport hunters will lose their most important game animal on 

 the Tongass . 



Grizzly bear populations, currently some of the healthiest left on 

 earth, also are being battered by logging and road building in the Tongass. 

 The State of Alaska's Board of Game last September was forced to make an 

 emergency closure of the hunting season for grizzly bears on northeast 

 Chichagof Island due to increased hiiman activity and access due to heavy 

 hunting along logging roads and killings at logging camp garbage dumps . Out 

 of a population of 120 grizzly bears, 21 were killed in 1987 and 14 in 1988 

 before the emergency closure was imposed. In one incident four grizzly bears 

 were shot or killed at an Alaska Pulp Corporation logging camp at Freshwater 

 Bay on Chichagof Island where an open-air dump was used as a hunting site. 

 APC had refused to build an incinerator at the site to prevent attracting 

 grizzly bears. Scientists agree that the greatest threat to grizzly bears 

 come from man's encroaching presence in the shrinking wilderness. Logging 

 development surely will hasten the demise of our last great bear populations. 



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