262 



TESTIMONY BY 



JOHN E. BLUBAUM 



P.O. BOX 434 



THORNE BAY, ALASKA 99919 



907-828-3946 



April 24, 1989 



My name is John E. Blubaum and I've been a resident of Prince of Wales 

 Island for 29 years. I am an advocate of the balance of the Tongass 

 National Forest philosophy. By professional classification I am 

 termed a logger. I am married and have two sons who have been born in 

 the Tongass and presently live in the Tongass. I am a member of the 

 Moose Club, Elks Club and the Masonic Temple. I have served eigth 

 years on the Southeast Island School District Board and have coached 

 and refereed high school and junior high basketball for the last 15 

 years. Of those years of service on the school board and with other 

 activities, I have been able to travel extensively in the southeastern 

 portion of the Tongass. I have worked on Prince of Wales Island, 

 Revi 1 1 igagado Island, Admiralty Island and a couple of other smaller 

 Islands. This has given me the first hand knowledge of how I perceive 

 the Tongass and how it is managed. 



I would like to try and focus on the idea that all of us here in this 

 room are really farmers. I was raised in southern Indiana in a small 

 farming community. I completed my high school education there and 

 then traveled to Los Angeles to attend college. I came up to Alaska 

 as a college student to work the summer of 1960. I liked the way of 

 life so well, I've been here ever since. 



It is only natural that coming from a farming back ground, I can 

 actually perceive a logger as a farmer. We are basically a farmer and 

 everyone in this room could be a farmer in his own profession. 

 Wheather it be a newspaperman trying to glean his little acorn of 

 information on how he can perceive these hearings so he can write for 

 his paper. You people on the committee arm farmers trying to glean 

 information so, you can go back and make a decision. The fisherman in 

 this room are farmers that harvest a renewable crop every year. We as 

 loggers are merely farmers. It is hard for people to realize rotating 

 a crop every 100 years, puts you into the class of harvesting or 

 farming a renewable resource. We are not like a miner or an oilman 

 that deals with a non-renewable resource but, basically they are 

 harvesting the fruits of the land, wheather it be silver at Green 

 Creek or oil on the north slope. We are basically farmers, all of us, 

 every job we have, wheather we're a businessman trying to go out and 

 harvest the fruits of someone elses labor selling them a product. We 

 in turn are no different, we're harvesting logs from a small percent 

 of an over mature forest. 



Now, I would like to allude to Francisco Mendes Filho, better known as 

 "Chico Mendes". When I say the name of Chico Mendes everyone will 

 recognize his name as an environmentalist, rubber tapper or logger who 



