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Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the 

 opportunity to enter this statement into the hearing record. My name 

 is Jill Lancelot. I am Director of Congressional Affairs for the 

 National Teixpayers Union. NTU is a non-profit, non-partisan public 

 interest organization dedicated to balancing the federal budget and 

 eliminating wasteful government spending. MTU has 210,000 members 

 nationwide . 



NTO endorses S. 346, the Tongass Timber Reform Act, introduced by 

 Senator Tim Wirth. MTU believes that S. 346 is our best hope for 

 rectifying a grevious wrong, both to the taxpayer and to a valuable 

 natural resource in the Tongass National Forest of Southeast Alaska. 



Federal law requires the U.S. Forest Service to manage the 

 national forests for multiple use, yet, in practice, most of the 

 agency's budget and staff are focused on timber production. A growing 

 body of evidence suggests that faulty Forest Service management, 

 particularly in the Tongass, is annually wasting tens of millions of 

 federal dollars, while promoting the destruction of thousands of acres 

 of forest valuable to a wide range of other users. 



It is our understanding that in Southeast Alaska, commercial 

 fishing and the outdoor recreation and tourism industry are 

 commercially viable and their contributions to the regional economy 

 are growing. In 1988 the value of commercial salmon to fishermen 

 (before processing) in Southeast Alaska alone was $139 million. The 

 tourism and recreation industry is still the fastest growing sector of 

 the economy in Southeast Alaska. Employment in each of these two 

 industries far exceeds the direct national-forest related timber 

 enployment in the region. 



