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Senator Wirth. Now I would like once again to remind our audi- 

 ence that everybody here is a guest of the committee. While we ap- 

 preciate your shows of enthusiasm one way or another it does not 

 really fit the purposes of the hearing process. 



Now Judy Brakel, is that right? 



STATEMENT OF JUDY BRAKEL 



Ms. Brakel. I thank you for your work and his co-sponsors for 

 introducing their Senate Bill 346 and ask that it be strengthened 

 by permanent protection to the 23 areas proposed for a moratori- 

 um. 



If these hearings were in Petersburg where I grew up or in 

 Juneau where I now live, the room would full of people who want 

 to see a change and I can tell you that since the oil spill people 

 have become a lot less silent and passive, Senator Murkowski, 

 about the ecological destruction of Alaska. 



My family has lived in southeast Alaska for generations and as a 

 kid I traveled by boat all around Southeast for years. Now my sons 

 fish salmon and my husband and I spend summers working as wil- 

 derness guides, we guide visitors who want to see raw places, not 

 logged off country and roads so logging is rapidly reducing the 

 places where we can do trips but protecting our livelihood is not 

 why I am here. 



Most of the people here supporting the present system never saw 

 the country before the logging. Cut over country looks natural to 

 them. For myself the massage logging affects me too deeply and 

 thinking about it produces a feeling of sickness, like thinking about 

 the oil spill. The logging is slower than the oil spill but every bit as 

 destructive because its effects will last longer. 



Although I am here supporting reform I confess I want it to stop. 

 Too much has been laid waste, small scale logging is OK but noth- 

 ing remotely like the scale we have seen. The trees grow back and 

 the forest is green again but as a lot of my colleagues have pointed 

 out they make poor wildlife habitat and I think biologists predict 

 that on 340 drainages logging will reduce deer populations over 75 

 percent. We eat deer. Many villages and small fishing communities 

 depend on deer. 



Salmon are the basic wealth of our country and have been since 

 the Thlingit were the only ones here. Salmon require high quality 

 stream habitat; the logging is targeting exactly on the stream and 

 river valleys where the highest volume, easiest to get timber grows. 



One of the effects of building thousands of miles of road is a 

 rapid decrease in brown bear populations. Chichagof Island has 

 been an alarming kill rate — fish and game staff familiar with the 

 situation do not have much hope for the long term survival of the 

 brown bear population and I brought a stack of letters from 

 Juneau that I just submitted that have — one of them has that on 

 the brown bear problem, some way about the economic effects of 

 reform. 



I raised three kids by myself and I have seen a few hard times 

 but one thing I found you could depend upon was the natural 

 wealth of the country. This country provided my family with much 

 of our food and most of our fuel and also provided us with our 



