395 



and that had been private property before the Federal Government 

 moved in and purchased that private property, purchased the land 

 holdings there. That is very different from anything we are en- 

 gaged in here. 



Secondly, Mr. Mayor, I appreciate the parallels to my good city 

 of Denver and Stapleton Airport, but I do not know what the paral- 

 lel is there. There is no Federal land involved. It is not being done 

 on a national forest. It is a little bit like asking somebody do you 

 walk to school or do you carry your lunch. It is a totally separate 

 operation. 



Let me look, if I might, at the amounts of forest wilderness that 

 were created in 1980. The argument is made that there was 1.7 mil- 

 lion acres of timber that was put into wilderness. Let us take a 

 look at the Department of Agriculture Status of the Tongass Na- 

 tional Forest 1987 report. On page 22 of that report, it points out 

 that the total amount put into wilderness was 1,478,000 acres. That 

 was land that was so-called commercial forest land. That means 

 land that has any timber on it, effectively at all, is capable of pro- 

 ducing any minimum amount of timber, not necessarily harvest- 

 able or saleable. That 1.5 million acres is any land that has timber 

 on it, not necessarily marketable. So, that is that 1.5 million acres. 

 So, let us start by saying the total amount — this came up yesterday 

 and I wanted to make sure that we have that and it is so-called 

 commercial because it has timber on it, but it is not necessarily 

 harvestable. So, then we say how much of that 1.5 million acres 

 was harvestable? That is the next question we have to answer. Let 

 us remember that 1.5 million acres was put into wilderness. How 

 much of that was harvestable? The 1.5 million acres is outlined on 

 page 22 of the Forest Service report on this whole issue. On page 

 23 it says of the 1.5 million acres, the amount that was harvestable 

 was a little less than 500 acres. So, 1.5 million acres was put into 

 wilderness and only 500 acres was harvestable. 



We might say, well, what does harvestable mean? Harvestable 

 means anything from zero to 50,000 board feet per acre, and nor- 

 mally that which is commercially feasible is above 30,000 board 

 feet per acre. So, of that amount, only 80,000 acres had commer- 

 cially feasible timber on it. In other words, of 1.5 million acres that 

 was put into wilderness, by the Forest Service's own number, and 

 this is the 1987 report, only 80,000 acres had 30,000 board feet per 

 acre or more. From time to time there is harvesting below that 

 30,000 feet per acre, but that becomes, going back to the subsidy 

 issue, very heavily subsidized timber and certainly not timber that 

 is going to be competitive in the market we are talking about. 



I just wanted for the record to point out that of the 1.5 million 

 acres put into wilderness only 80,000 were prime commercially har- 

 vestable acres, according to the Forest Service's numbers. Those 

 are also the areas that were the most sensitive, related to fish habi- 

 tat and other values as well. The controversial timbering area is 

 only 80,000 acres. I think that stands for itself on the record. 



We are not talking about taking out of the Tongass and putting 

 into wilderness a vast reserve of timberable area. That has not 

 happened. 



Now, if I might, Governor, I would just like to ask you for the 

 record, and maybe the Congress might want to do this. I was in- 



