67 



Association, Leslie Bartholomew, Ketchikan, Cliff Taro, Ketchikan, 

 Roger Stone, Ketchikan, Marlene Clarke of Wrangell and Lew Wil- 

 liams of Ketchikan and coming up, Mr. Thomas, Mr. Williams and 

 Mr. Atkinson and Mr. Guiza and Mr. DeWitt, you all would move 

 into, near the center seats. 



Thank you for being here, you are also familiar with the rules 

 and we ask you to hold your statements to three minutes and as 

 noted before your statements will be included in the full record. 



Mr. Steveler. Please be seated Mr. Steveler. 



STATEMENT OF GREG STEVELER, THE GUSTAVUS COMMUNITY 



ASSOCIATION 



Mr. Steveler. I represent the Community Association of Gusta- 

 vus, Alaska, which is a little community on the north shore of Icy 

 Strait, on the north extremity of southeast Alaska. 



The people of my town make their living primarily from fishing. 

 Almost everyone in town uses the region's timber, fish and game as 

 part of a rural, subsistance-based lifestyle. Our way of life depends 

 heavily on the country's continued beauty and productivity. 



We are not against resource use. That includes logging, which 

 has gone on for years to provide local lumber, and firewood and the 

 like. There have also been some small for-export clearcuts. The 

 country can handle this but by and large large-scale clearcutting 

 that has been moving into our vicinity now is another matter en- 

 tirely. We know from personal experience from watching this that 

 large-scale clearcutting is a form of resource destruction, leaving 

 the land ugly to farm at and wide open to various forms of abuse 

 later on. 



The goal of our town is sustainable use of the Tongass. Our life- 

 style depends on that so to us this means logging on a scale, in a 

 way that the country can absorb it. 



We want Americans in the future to find deer, salmon and big 

 trees and beauty in abundance along Icy Strait, as we have. The 

 country can provide those things in perpetuity if we use it in a rea- 

 sonable fashion. 



We thank Senator Wirth and his colleagues for their efforts on 

 behalf of Tongass reform. Their bill proposes some important steps 

 in the right direction. It would make timber harvest more flexible. 

 It would force renegotiation of the timber contracts that have made 

 most of southeast Alaska into two private kingdoms. It would 

 cancel the automatic money the Forest Service gets to enhance 

 these projects as a road from nowhere to nowhere along the Chil- 

 kat Peninsula near our town and it would give some key places 

 temporary protection from clearcutting. 



The bill does a good job to identify areas of Icy Strait important 

 to the local people. The many marine species that congregate there 

 support a large sport and commercial fishery as well as sightseeing 

 and whalewatching vessels up to the size of cruise ships. The coast- 

 al forests are excellent for deer hunting and pretty much the same 

 thing holds for Pleasant and Lemesurier Islands, two other areas 

 slated for protection. 



We wish however that the protection of these areas could be far 

 more than the few years the bill now envisions. In fact, if we had 



