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During the past few months, a committee of courageous local 

 mayors and city council members have hammered out a compromise 

 proposal for Tongass legislation which recognizes the underlying 

 interests of southeast Alaska communities. While neither perfect 

 nor unanimously supported, this unprecedented Southeast 

 Conference compromise comes closer to satisfying the concerns of 

 a majority of affected Alaskans than any other alternative. For 

 this reason, I support key elements of this compromise and urge 

 you to seriously consider their merits. 



The key elements of the compromise include the following: 



The Secretary of Agriculture would have the discretion to offer 

 for sale up to 4.5 billion board feet of sawtimber per decade, 

 subject to annual appropriations, his estimate of annual market 

 demand for wood products from the forest, sustained yield 

 capacity of the forest, and protection of other resources and 

 uses of the forest as determined through the planning process. 

 The forest planning process would not be constrained by any 

 Congressionally mandated timber supply requirement. 



This approach would allow the Secretary to use the planning 

 process and the ten year plan to determine how much timber would 

 be made available during the course of the decade. 



As those who were close to the Southeast Conference process are 

 aware, a number of amendments were considered which would have 

 eliminated the Secretary's discretion to set the harvest level in 

 the ten year plan. These amendments were not approved by the 

 Southeast Conference. The small communities and non-timber users 

 have made it very clear that no compromise is possible unless the 

 Secretary of Agriculture has this discretion. 



It should be noted that the proposal of the Southeast Conference 

 does not require the Secretary of Agriculture to reduce the ten 

 year figure. The language merely gives him the discretion to set 

 this figure based on his professional judgement and dictates of 

 applicable federal law. 



Adequate funds should be appropriated each year to ensure a 

 program of intensive forest management in addition to normal 

 appropriations. Up to 15 million dollars should be provided 

 annually for this intensive management program. Up to 20% of 

 this amount should be used to promote, protect, and enhance 

 commercial, subsistence, and sport fisheries, the wildlife, and 

 recreation resources in addition to other normal appropriations 

 for these purposes. The balance of intensive management funds 

 should be used to conduct precommercial thinning in young timber 

 stands and, under existing Forest Service criteria, to invest in 

 the construction of new facilities needed to access timber sale 

 areas. 



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