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Senator Murkowski. For the predator take in your testimony, 

 was that the wolf predators or the deer population which obviously 

 is fairly significant? 



Mr. KiRCHHOFF. That is correct. 



Senator Murkowski. Is there any relation, any reason why this 

 reluctance in the Department of Fish and Game and I know you 

 are not speaking for them but I continually had opportunities to 

 meet with people from our State Fish and Game for some reason 

 and they always seem to leave out the wolf predator and I really do 

 not know why. 



Mr. KiRCHHOFF. Well, we are concerned about the low level of 

 deer in those areas. We have a research project for three years. 



Senator Wirth. Mr. Mehrkins, do you have any predator control? 



Mr. KiRCHHOFF. No. 



Senator Murkowski. Did you use to have predator control in 

 Southeast Alaska? 



Mr. KiRCHHOFF. I believe there was. 



Senator Murkowski. And now there is not any more? We can 

 have that straightened out today. I think it's important that we 

 relate to game policies and we look at all pertinent factors and cer- 

 tainly the wolf is a pertinent factor; indeed as you say, one will 

 take ten pounds of deer a day and I do not think any one of us 

 knows how many wolves there are and that is pretty fast, particu- 

 larly if you get a tough winter and get winter kill or deep snow, we 

 all know the realities of that. Now I would liked to ask the panel 

 one general question, is there generally an agreement that in fact 

 there is within the make-up of the forest as we see it today 1.7 mil- 

 lion acres that have been set aside in perpetuity in wilderness, 

 virgin timber, was selected at the recommendation of the environ- 

 mental groups in 1980, according to their priorities. This is when 

 we basically created the wilderness. It is the agreement that the 

 1.7 million acres of commercial timber that was put into wilderness 

 at the recommendation specifically of national environmental 

 groups who had input in it, would actually agree with that 

 premise? 



Mr. Mehrkins. I disagree. 



Senator Wirth. Would you perhaps say it is not 1.7 million acres 

 of commercial timber that is in wilderness? 



Mr. Mehrkins. It is commercial timber that is a misnomer. First 

 off if you go back to the definition all it says is that to be commer- 

 cially qualified as commercial timber it has to meet a certain mini- 

 mum growth rate and that particular chunk of ground may be up 

 on a mountainside and slide into Salmon Creek and would not be 

 harvested or is not technically feasible to be harvested or may not 

 be economic but they still call it commercial timberland. 



Now when you put in all these other screens like operability, eco- 

 nomic and the amount of commercial timber that is in wilderness 

 that defaults often the 1.7 that you are citing to literally like 

 200,000 or down to 80,000. 



Senator Murkowski. I think what we ought to do is quiz the 

 Forest Service a little better because those are the figures that 

 they have provided us and they say that is commercial timber that 

 has been put into wilderness, an area the size of New Hampshire, 

 1.7 million acres of commercial forest land is in wilderness. I would 



