197 



to Senator Burns' question, in these long-term contracts what hap- 

 pens when the Tongass meets all of the environmental concerns, 

 requirements of other forests and your answer to that is yes? 



Mr. PiHL. Yes. 



Senator Wirth. In fact is it not the case that under the Forest 

 Management Act it is required that there be a suitability analysis 

 done by the Forest Service, to look at the forest and to determine 

 whether or not certain tracts are suitable for timbering and that 

 the requirements under the Forest Management Act are that suit- 

 ability analysis be done and particularly economic viability and bi- 

 ological salability and that is required of every forest but for rea- 

 sons which I — well, I hope you can get for the record, that is 

 waived under ANILCA, under ANILCA that the suitability require- 

 ments are waived; in other words Senator Burns' question said — 

 asked a little different to say, most ways the same requirements 

 are there but ANILCA the suitability requirements are waived and 

 there are not the same environmental requirements on the Ton- 

 gass as there are on other national forests. 



Maybe we can get to that — well, might submit that for the record 

 but again one of the things that I think we have to understand 

 why the Tongass is treated differently, why is the suitability re- 

 quirement analysis required of every other national forest and not 

 required of the Tongass. 



Mr. PiHL. When the 5.4 million acres was put in wilderness as a 

 part of ANILCA in 1980 and the funding was set up to reach into 

 that marginal timber component, in order to do that and to make 

 that provision, let us say the 4.5 billion took an exception to that 

 suitability analysis that you are referring to and I think it is Sec- 

 tion 705(d) and Congress recognized that if you are going to be 

 forced into the marginal timber components, was stated as 4.5, you 

 had to have that provision of that section from the suitability to 

 the extent to be forced into that marginal timber. That is my un- 

 derstanding of that extension. 



Senator Wirth. I think that you — maybe that would be the case. 

 Again, the waiving of the suitability requirement was driven by 

 the 4.5 billion board feet requirement. 



Mr. PiHL. No, it is by the 5.4 million acres put into wilderness, 

 sir. 



Ms. Shaub. The objectives they are trying to reach at that 

 time — there were a group of people that wanted 5.5 million acres of 

 wilderness and there was the timber industry that wanted to main- 

 tain jobs and there was the fishing interest who wanted to more 

 fully protect resources in areas that went into wilderness but 

 would be harvested for timber and in trying to balance all of that 

 it was not just timber, it was not just wilderness, it was sort of all 

 of those issues and how to balance that and when they had all 

 those interests it did not work, you could not have 4.5 million acres 

 and still maintain the job level so Congress said, "Well, let us 

 figure out a way that we can have this amount of wilderness and 

 keep the jobs, those are two things we want and let's figure out 

 how to do this". 



One way they figured out how to do it was to, let us go into some 

 of these areas that are — well, we do not consider them commercial- 

 ly harvestable or they are marginal but these are the kinds of 



