238 



Mr. Mehrkins. Those are jobs that would reflect the entire in- 

 dustry, not only Tongass dependent but private logging. Private 

 logging has rapidly increased so that 



Senator Wirth. So the relevant jobs in the Tongass was subject — 

 was that right? 



Mr. Mehrkins. Yes, yes. 



Senator Wirth. The 2,500 jobs was 1,900. Is there any debate 

 about that set of numbers? 



Mr. Mehrkins. These were taken from Forest Service Timber — 

 Supply and Demand Reports are also based on State of Alaska De- 

 partment of Labor 



Senator Wirth. And how much was spent since 1980? 



Mr. Mehrkins. Basing the GEO Report which covers from 1981 

 to 1985, something like that, 256 million or 257 million and now 

 there has been considerable spending since then of course, and of 

 that 256 million, the GAO found literally half, about 131 not neces- 

 sarily to be spent because the timber demand was so low and that 

 fact, 131 million, that was spent by maintaining jobs had failed. 

 They could not offset the decline of jobs or the decline of demand. 



Senator Wirth. Now $380 million and 1,900 jobs were involved. 

 How much per job is that? 



Mr. Mehrkins. I would work out the numbers but in the past the 

 subsidy has been somewhere in the neighborhood of about $35,000 

 per job per year. 



Senator Wirth. That is pretty good. 



Mr. Mehrkins. It would depend on which side of the equation 

 you are looking at. 



Senator Wirth. Is there any debate about that figure, that 

 $35,000 per job per year subsidized by the Federal Government? 



Mr. Mehrkins. The debate centers on what you heard today. It is 

 a debate about wilderness or debate about government spending or 

 the debate about the timber programs; too many things they would 

 like to clarify here. 



In 1985 I led a team of Forest Service — a Disciplinary Planning 

 Team, and prepared 706(b) status report, that is the status of the 

 Tongass National Forest which required in those draft reports at 

 the conclusion of my team was that there was no effect of wilder- 

 ness on a Tongass timber-dependent job levels. That had even been 

 published in several public drafts. It was then subsequently edited 

 out at the Secretary of Agriculture's office but that was the deter- 

 mination of that team. 



Secondly, we are talking about the fact that we needed this 

 money as part of this deal to invest in marginal timber, since we 

 had done exactly what TLMP had requested us and actually invest- 

 ed in marginal timber — our average harvest yield per acre should 

 have been about 26,000 board foot per acre. That did not happen, in 

 fact it was substantially higher than that and basically followed 

 historic trends about 40,000 to 42,000 foot per acre and frankly 

 what that says to me that we spent the money and the money was 

 used to build roads and so forth, and maintain the facilities and 

 whatever but that money was spent in the better timber stands, 

 not the marginal timber stands, so that is also fair. 



Senator Wirth. Is that high grade? 



