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Today, the most important commodity-based industries, timber 

 and fishing, each account for ten percent of employment. On the 

 other hand, tourism is the region's fastest-growing industry. 

 Tourism-related employment has doubled since 1970 and now 

 provides about thirteen percent of the full-time equivalent jobs 

 in the region. 



At the turn of the century, the federal government began 

 seeking to use timber — primarily Sitka spruce and hemlock — 

 from the Tongass National Forest to provide jobs and promote 

 economic development in southeast Alaska. The notion of creating 

 a "forced" wood products economy in southeast Alaska originated 

 with the Forest Seirvice and, over time, has been 

 institutionalized to serve the interests of that agency. Since 

 1980 and the enactment of Section 705 of the Alaska National 

 Interest Lands conservation Act (ANILCA) , the Congress has been 

 indirectly involved in supporting the agency's plan to convert 

 the Tongass National Forest into a tree farm without regard to 

 the costs to the taxpayer or the environment. 



As early as 1910, the Forest Service proclaimed that the 

 "timber would be cut and utilized as soon as possible" and that a 

 pulp industry was the most desirable use for the region's timber 

 resources. Ultimately, after several failed attempts over a 40- 

 year period, the Forest Service succeeded in awarding two long- 

 term timber contracts on the Tongass. These 50-year contracts, 

 now held by Louisiana Pacific Corporation and Alaska Pulp 

 Corporation, feature guaranteed supplies of timber at low 

 stumpage fees in exchange for a commitment to construct and 

 operate pulp mills in Ketchikan and Sitka and to develop roads 

 and other facilities in Southeast. 



When Congress enacted ANILCA, Section 705 established a goal 

 of supplying 4.5 billion board feet of timber per decade from the 

 Tongass to "dependent industry." This provision also provided an 

 open-ended appropriation of "at least $40 million annually or as 

 much as the Secretary of Agriculture finds is necessary" to 

 achieve the timber supply goal. Furthermore, the act exempted 

 this special funding from the annual appropriations process in 

 Congress and from deferral or rescission by the Administration. 



Section 705 of ANILCA is the only instance where Congress 

 has intervened in the forest planning process established by the 

 National Forest Management Act of 1976 to set a timber sale goal 

 for a national forest. The Section 705 funding mechanism, the 

 Tongass Timber Supply Fund, is also the only national forest 

 timber budget that is exempt from the annual appropriations 

 process. 



In effect, the timber supply goal and funding specified in 

 Section 705 of the act ratified the Forest Service's 1979 Tongass 

 Land Management Plan. As implemented by the Forest Service, 



