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STATEMENT OF JOHN E. BLUBAUM 



Mr. Blubaum. Before we start I would like to present you with 

 another petition like the ones presented earlier; it has over 100 sig- 

 natures and represents 500 people but it is basically from the 



My name is John Blubaum and I have been a resident of — now 

 this is in support of Mr. Murkowski's Bill. 



Anyway, my name is John Blubaum and I have been a resident 

 of Prince of Wales Island for 29 years. I am after the balance that 

 you said. By professional classification I am a logger but basically I 

 am just a person trying to make a living. I have been a member — 

 an elected official in southeast — we have 15 in the school district. 

 We have 15 schools in the Tongass which gives me an opportunity 

 to travel and gives me an idea of the Tongass' grandeur. 



I come from a small southern background and naturally I just 

 wanted to succeed and got into logging, as a logger. Now what hap- 

 pens to loggers is that it is hard to perceive rotating a crop every 

 hundred years. This ground is not — will not raise soybeans or corn 

 or wheat but it does an awful good job of raising spruce, hemlock 

 and cedar. 



Also I would like to allude to Fernando Mendez, who is known as 

 Chico Mendez. When I say that everybody should recognize that 

 the name Mendez is an environmentalist in Brazil, the lumber cap- 

 ital, but basically he was a logger. Logging people do not realize 

 that but all he did was tapping rubber trees and when they got old 

 and would not produce any more he was a strong advocate of cut- 

 ting the trees and replanting them, rubber trees. 



What he was against and why he lost his life was defending his 

 forest against deforestation so basically we are not deforesting. 

 Congress, we are just basically harvesting old mature trees. 



The fishermen in this audience are basically farmers too; they 

 harvest crop once a year, a renewable resource, and if they are 

 lucky and diversified they might get two so 



Senator Wirth. We have reached that point. 



Mr. Blubaum. Well, I would like to say that Robert W. Service, a 

 poet from here promised — a promise made is a promise made. 



[The prepared statement of Mr. Blubaum follows:] 



