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the terms of the contracts. We are tired of this answer when the 

 450 annual MMBF supply mandate has never been harvested. We 

 firmly believe that removal of the inflexible 450 mandate will untie 

 the hands of agency professionals. The Tongass Land Management 

 Plan would then be driven by land and water suitability and multi- 

 ple economic needs, not driven by politically derived supply figures. 

 Management by congressional mandate does not work; it drives the 

 planning process backwards. The Management Plan should be built 

 from the land up. 



The other major obstacle to multiple use management in the 

 Tongass is the long-term contracts which weigh down balanced 

 multiple use just as the congressional mandates do. In this light we 

 ask for contract renegotiation, not contract cancellation. The fish- 

 ermen believe that the timber industry should be given some meas- 

 ure of contract stability. We believe contract re negotiation can do 

 this without devastating our local economy. 



The timber industry would have everyone believe that any 

 change to Tongass Management would be devastating, yet at a 

 recent conference in Ketchikan on the Future of the Timber Indus- 

 try in Southeast, Martin Pihl of Ketchikan Pulp Company spoke 

 with guarded optimism about the future of the pulp industry. I 

 quote from his text, "But yet there is a very, very solid base of 

 business out there worldwide to participate in. The market really 

 looks optimistic for the future." Combine this outlook for markets 

 with the other forest dependent industries strengthened by true 

 multiple use management and the economic outlook is certainly 

 not one of doom and gloom. 



In fact the seafood industry employs 3,900 people. The seafood in- 

 dustry is Alaska's largest private employer and I would like to just 

 finish by saying our call for balanced multiple use is also a call for 

 jobs and income. To put it simply fish habitat protection means 

 more fish and more fish means more jobs and income. A recent 

 study by the Institute of Social and Economic Research showed 

 that for every dollar spent on salmon hatcheries 2.3 dollars were 

 returned to the state's economy. This study clearly indicates that 

 fish enhancement projects give one of the best rates of return for 

 public investments. Good fish management and enhancement will 

 pay off for the Forest Service too. True multiple use management 

 in the Tongass will strengthen both the fishing and timber indus- 

 tries in the long term. It is time that we begin to manage the Ton- 

 gass for multiple use just like all other national forests. 



Senator Wirth. Thank you, Ms. Troll. Now if you will indulge 

 me for a moment, could you tell me when this happens to the 

 salmon in the stream, is the catch increased or decreased or what 

 is happening to it? 



Mr. Amend. We were experiencing an increase in the catch for — 

 especially in the earlier part of this decade and in two favorable 

 winters and also I believe due to some results of the Magnuson Act 

 it was bringing in more protection offshore. As a region I think 

 that Senator Murkowski knows very well of the issues that we had 

 been facing in the last few years. We were impacted quite severely 

 by the high seas fleet that has been working out in the North Pa- 

 cific right now and that is also a very major issue of ours that we 



