188 



Senator Wirth. There are twelve other ones and I will be happy 

 to point those out for the record. 



Ms. Shaub. The other point you are asking is why they are treat- 

 ed differently. It was my understanding that the Tongass was the 

 only one but that was the reason why we had to have the addition- 

 al — well, in order to keep up we had to go into the areas that 

 were — had valuable timber, we had to add more money into the 

 management, money for the Tongass in order to access those areas. 



Senator Wirth. There is a large part of the Tongass that is in 

 wilderness. The argument was made, as I understand it, the argu- 

 ment that you and Mr. Pihl are making is that one of the reasons 

 that this exists, I think that is what you are making, is one of the 

 reasons that this exists is that such a high percentage of timber- 

 land is in wilderness. 



Ms. Shaub. One-third of the forest land is in wilderness. 



Senator Wirth. How much of the land — of the wilderness land is 

 in fact timber area? 



Ms. Shaub. There is 5.5 million acres in wilderness and I believe 

 about two-thirds of that 5.5 is forested and about half of that is 

 commercial forest land and 1.7, I believe, of the wilderness is com- 

 mercial forest land. 



Senator Wirth. How much of that is commercially high volume 

 timber, do you know, the part that is in wilderness? That is the 

 area that it states here, how much of the forest wilderness area is 

 commercial — high quality commercial timber area? 



Ms. Shaub. I will not be able to tell you that off the top of my 

 head but I believe the Forest Service documents that — will show 

 surely a representative sample I believe between eight to 21 mil- 

 lion board feet, 20 to 30 and 30 to 50, three categories that they are 

 generally put into. The largest category is 20 to 30 million board 

 feet, that is where most harvesting takes place and that is what 

 most of the higher majority of lands in the wilderness are. There is 

 a smaller percentage of the 



Senator Wirth. Maybe we could get you off the record but the 

 argument is made that only 80,000 acres or less than two percent 

 of the Tongass Wilderness consists of commercially important or 

 high volume timber. That means the choicest timber for harvest 

 and if those numbers are incorrect perhaps we can get back from 

 you a correction of that second point about the national forests and 

 the percentage of those other national forests in wilderness. It is 

 my understanding that there are many other national forests that 

 have a higher percentage of wilderness. That may not be correct 

 but we will make sure that we put that in the record and I will ask 

 the staff to make sure that that is included in the record. 



Ms. Shaub. May I just make another point, how Alaska is differ- 

 ent? 



In other national forests when a company makes an investment 

 into a sawmill they rely just on Federal timber, they generally 

 have private timberland contracts to supply the mill as well. In 

 southeast Alaska the industry was attracted here simply from fed- 

 eral timber and in order to attract that investment they needed to 

 have an ensured wood supply made available. That is quite differ- 

 ent than other National Forests. 



