195 



United States got for it. They got 1.7 million acres of commercial 

 timber, not just wilderness but commercial timber, and that went 

 into wilderness and that is what we maintain for, that is what: a 

 million dollars a year to access other areas. Now we are doing 

 away with it. 



Senator Wirth. Now maybe we can find out which is put into 

 wilderness and which is commercial timber, maybe we can under- 

 stand that now. 



Second, let us ask if we might say what other wildernesses were 

 created. This wilderness was done in 1980, there was a big Wilder- 

 ness Bill in Colorado in 1980, there was a large Wilderness Bill at 

 one point in Montana; when those Wilderness Bills were created 

 did in fact — did it come with a price like the one for Tongass as 

 well and if not, why not, what happened in Montana that was dif- 

 ferent than what happened in Colorado or was different than when 

 we had Wilderness Bills there. 



Senator Burns. Let us clarify one thing, I think there is some 

 confusion in some areas here. 



Logs cut from public lands cannot be exported in the raw. There 

 is a law prohibiting that and that is — we are going to try to put 

 that into permanent law. I think we should go for value and pro- 

 tect our mill jobs and I think that we are a lot better off exporting 

 dimension lumber rather than raw logs and we want to clarify this. 

 I am — I have a question here; Mr. Pihl, would you really support 

 reductions in the 400 million board feet goal if the TLMP deter- 

 mines that this level exceeds the biological probabilities of the suit- 

 able land? In other words if once these plans, the forest plan comes 

 in, we found that that is not sustained growth, can you accept the 

 lower figure? 



Mr. Pihl. I do not think the data or the answer on that and it is 

 not going to be in until TLMP has been completed. It has to — well, 

 I get nervous about that, the very principle of meeting the $40 mil- 

 lion was established on the basis that the Forest Service said that 

 we cannot sustain 4.5 billion without the funding to go into about 

 25 or 30 percent marginal timber component and that is why it was 

 necessary. In other words, not fully commercial timber. 



Now I do not have — I really cannot give a full answer on that. I 

 have heard that the Forest Service says 4.5 if you do not — the land 

 base, that 4.5 can be sustained. The Wirth Bill involves 23 areas, 

 1.8 million acres additionally. That would put you in that situation 

 where you couldn't maintain it. As a matter of fact some of the 

 areas would put the Government in a breach situation because it 

 involves areas, an area and a likely fail plan and committed under 

 our long-term contract. For example, what I said, that you can take 

 the Carter Area for example and you can protect Carter River, 

 Carter Lake and Salmon Lake and then have a timber program 

 that just involves the Malgilvery Valley and Edison Creek coming 

 in from the backside — protecting the sensitive values that we all 

 want to protect in the lower reaches of the Carter and yet have a 

 timber program and honor the contract and have the best of both 

 worlds. The same thing can be done in the Nutkwa Area, for exam- 

 ple, and we have done that work that shows how you can do that 

 and we thought we were very close to agreement with some of the 

 environmental representatives of southeast Alaska last year. 



