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wilderness, its natural beauty and botanical wealth. This should 

 not be a single use National Forest but it is being managed as 

 such. Fish and wildlife habitat and scenic recreation and tourism 

 potential are all damaged or destroyed in clearcuts. These are 

 areas that have been stripped of their multiple use potential. The 

 Tongass needs a balance between logging and its other uses. This 

 balance has been lost. 



The 4.5 billion board-foot decade production mandate imposed on 

 the U.S. Forest Service by Congress does not allow for the reasona- 

 ble management on a multiple use basis. National Forest manage- 

 ment cannot come from politically based production quotas. This is 

 the way the Soviet Union runs its agriculture and it is not a good 

 way to run our national forests. From a personal standpoint this 

 means that the places where we go camping with our families, fish- 

 ing with our friends or sightseeing with our guests are on the chop- 

 ping block. These are places full of deer, otter, bear, wolves and 

 eagles, as well as salmon, trout, steelhead and Dolly Varden and 

 yet when we work toward the protection of the places that we love 

 best we know that our success is based on the sacrifice of someone 

 else's back yard. 



Please cancel the 50-year contracts, repeal the 4.5 billion board- 

 foot harvest mandate and please give permanent protection to 

 some of the aresis that we most value for its wildlife and recreation 

 value. Permanent protection will not lock up the land but will lock 

 up the Tongass use, stripping it of all value by clearcutting it. 



Let us share use of this wonderful region with loggers, fisher- 

 men, hunters, campers, tourists and just plain people and then we 

 will have something to share with our children and our grandchil- 

 dren. 



Thank you. 



Senator Wirth. Thank you very much, Mr. Hummel. 



Paul Dirksen. 



STATEMENT OF PAUL DIRKSEN 



Mr. Dirksen. My name is Paul Dirksen and I am from Anchor- 

 age. I am a Real Estate Appraiser and have been appraising in the 

 State of Alaska since 1964. I am a resident of Juneau and have 

 wide experience appraising southeast Alaska. 



I wanted to comment on the impact on real estate value if there 

 is a termination of the timber contract. 



In 1982 when they were proposing to move the capitol from 

 Juneau to Willow I was employed by the new capitol's County 

 Commissioner to do a study of what I could be expected to happen 

 to real estate values in Juneau if the capitol were moved. Based on 

 that study our conclusion was that values would decline in the 

 neighborhood of 50 percent. 



Since that time we have had a drastic decline in real estate 

 values in Anchorage where my principal business operation is; 

 properties that were selling in 1985 for $100,000 are selling now for 

 as low as 25,000 or in the neighborhood of a 75 percent decline in 

 values. 



This is the impact after only a 12.5 percent decline in population. 

 Typical real estate purchases involve an equity payment of perhaps 



