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tionally important wildlife and fishery resources. Its management 

 has made it one of the most expensive of all our national forests to 

 run. 



And, in an era when we are trying hard to find a way to create 

 more balanced plans for every national forest — plans that are re- 

 sponsive to the growing public demand for and economic impor- 

 tance of fisheries, recreation, tourism, wildlife and other values of 

 our forests — the Tongass stands out as hamstrung in its ability to 

 respond to that challenge. 



I believe the Tongass is hamstrung because all its planning and 

 management revolves around three things unique to this forest: the 

 rigid goal of having to supply 4.5 billion board feet of timber for 

 sale per decade, the automatic provision of at least $40 million per 

 year for timber programs, and the 50-year contracts which give two 

 timber buyers exclusive control of large parts of the forest. 



The legislation which I have introduced has five central provi- 

 sions. First, it eliminates the now-mandatory timber goal of 4.5 bil- 

 lion board feet per decade for the Tongass. 



The second point of the legislation eliminates the guaranteed 

 minimum annual appropriation of $40 million for the Tongass 

 timber program. 



The third point of the legislation terminates the two 50-year 

 timber contracts so that timber will be sold through the normal 

 process of short-term contracts. Long-term timber contracts were 

 eliminated from the other national forests in the country during 

 the 1950s and 1960s, while this is the mechanism remaining here. 



Fourth, the legislation requires the Forest Service to revise its 

 land management plan to adjust to not having the mandatory 

 timber goal, the guaranteed appropriation, or the long-term con- 

 tracts, and also to achieve a balance between timber, wildlife, fish- 

 eries, recreation, and all the other uses and values of this forest. In 

 other words, this provides the Forest Service with room to start de 

 novo on its planning process. 



Fifth, the legislation places 23 areas off limits to logging until 

 this new Forest plan is completed. The legislation does not put any 

 lands in wilderness. It does not put any lands off limits to logging 

 permanently, but it would ensure that logging under the old plan 

 does not eliminate the options for protecting these particularly im- 

 portant areas for fisheries, wildlife, recreation, and subsistence use 

 in the new plan. 



These five proposals were made in the hope that they would pro- 

 tect resources in the Tongass National Forest which are important 

 to Alaska's economy, and that they enable the Tongass to adjust to 

 a future which, whether the legislation passes or not, is going to be 

 different than the past. 



In the past, the Tongass was run for the timber industry. It is 

 becoming apparent that we cannot do that and expect everyone 

 else to do just fine. Now, the commercial fishermen, the tourism 

 industry, the subsistence user and the hunters and fishermen of 

 this area want to be partners in the management of the forest be- 

 cause they all depend on the forest as much as the timber industry 

 does. 



In the past. Congress thought that pouring money into the 

 timber program of this forest, and other forests, would solve all 



