199 



all other national forests are treated and then if there is a reason 

 not to do so then we should know it. 



Thank you all very much, that was a long panel but a very inter- 

 esting one and a lot of these issues have emerged and I wanted to 

 get some of these issues on the record. We thank you all very much 

 and Ms. Shaub, you are a very good representative of the loggers. 

 You can go home and tell them you earned your keep. 



Senator Murkowski. I want to compliment the panel too. 



Senator Wirth. The final panel of the morning is Ms. Sylvia Ger- 

 aghty, representing Alaskans for Responsible Resource Manage- 

 ment (will you all please come up to table two) and Jackie Canter- 

 bury of the Tongass Conservation Society, Joe Mehrkens of the 

 Wilderness Society, Natural Resource Center, Matthew Kirchhoff, 

 Alaska Chapter of the Wildlife Society, Joan Kautzer of Alaska 

 Women in Trees, Wayne Weihing. We will include your testimony 

 in full in the record and let me ask you, any of you would like to 

 do so, we will just go through and you can read your statements if 

 you want and we will include those in the record or we might ask, 

 some of you might want to address any of the issues that came up 

 in the previous panel and if I was attempting to kind of get us, at 

 some point kind of honing the issues down here so if any of you, 

 instead of reading your testimony want to comment on any of 

 those we welcome that as well. 



Ms. Geraghty. 



STATEMENT OF SYLVIA GERAGHTY, REPRESENTING ALASKANS 

 FOR RESPONSIBLE RESOURCE MANAGEMENT 



Ms. Geraghty. My name is Sylvia Geraghty, I am from Tokeen 

 and I was born in the Territory of Alaska 50 years ago. I am here 

 representing Alaskans for Responsible Resource Management, 

 ARRM, a group of small logging operators, fishermen, trappers, 

 and others. We have about 150 supporters. 



I would like to respond to a couple of those things that were 

 brought up by the last panel, for one thing less than four percent 

 of the wilderness contains high volume old growth which is 30,000 

 board feet above — which is really commercially valuable timber- 

 land. That is less than four percent of the 5.4 million acres that are 

 in wilderness and neither of the two mills lost one acre or one 

 board foot due to the Wilderness Act. 



The little bit that was lost was replaced by higher volume acres 

 so they did not indeed lose anything; none of their land was lost to 

 wilderness. 



I would personally like to thank you Senator Wirth, for your in- 

 terest in the Tongass. I would urge you to add affirmative protec- 

 tion to the 23 key areas. 



The members of our organization have seen many years of 

 timber industry and Forest Service bureaucracy out of control and 

 we have seen critical errors in attitude to those of us who generally 

 have deep concern over the Tongass and when a Congressional del- 

 egation refers to the Alaskan people as they all share an appropri- 

 ate timber industry view which is obviously far from true. Thou- 

 sands of us do not share that, so it has been a land of opportunity 

 for the timber industry, also it is our land and far too often their 



