[Senate Hearing 114-422]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 114-422
THE CHALLENGES AND IMPACTS OF FEDERAL REGULATIONS AND WILDFIRE
MANAGEMENT ON OUTDOOR RECREATION, HUNTING AND FISHING OPPORTUNITIES,
AND TOURISM ON PUBLIC LANDS ON THE KENAI PENINSULA
=======================================================================
FIELD HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON
ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MAY 31, 2016
__________
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
Available via the World Wide Web: http://fdsys.gov
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
21-989 WASHINGTON : 2017
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing
Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800;
DC area (202) 512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2104 Mail: Stop IDCC,
Washington, DC 20402-0001
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska, Chairman
JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming MARIA CANTWELL, Washington
JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho RON WYDEN, Oregon
MIKE LEE, Utah BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
JEFF FLAKE, Arizona DEBBIE STABENOW, Michigan
STEVE DAINES, Montana AL FRANKEN, Minnesota
BILL CASSIDY, Louisiana JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia
CORY GARDNER, Colorado MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico
ROB PORTMAN, Ohio MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii
JOHN HOEVEN, North Dakota ANGUS S. KING, JR., Maine
LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts
SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia
COLIN HAYES, Staff Director
PATRICK J. McCORMICK III, Chief Counsel
MICHELLE LANE, Professional Staff Member
CHUCK KLEESCHULTE, Senior Professional Staff Member
ANGELA BECKER-DIPPMANN, Democratic Staff Director
SAM E. FOWLER, Democratic Chief Counsel
DAVID BROOKS, Democratic General Counsel
C O N T E N T S
----------
OPENING STATEMENTS
Page
Murkowski, Hon. Lisa, Chairman, and a U.S. Senator from Alaska... 1
WITNESSES
Maisch, John ``Chris,'' State Forester and Director, Alaska
Department of Natural Resources, Division of Forestry.......... 5
Navarre, Hon. Mike, Mayor, Kenai Peninsula Borough, Soldotna,
Alaska......................................................... 15
Clock, Cindy, Executive Director, Seward Chamber of Commerce
(Alaska)....................................................... 32
Gease, Ricky, Executive Director, Kenai River Sportsfishing
Association.................................................... 36
Spraker, Ted, Safari Club International, Alaska.................. 46
ALPHABETICAL LISTING AND APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED
Clock, Cindy:
Opening Statement............................................ 32
Written Testimony............................................ 34
Gease, Ricky:
Opening Statement............................................ 36
Written Testimony............................................ 40
Harpring, Jim and Ginny:
Statement for the Record..................................... 77
Maisch, John ``Chris'':
Opening Statement............................................ 5
Written Testimony............................................ 9
Murkowski, Hon. Lisa:
Opening Statement............................................ 1
Navarre, Hon. Mike:
Opening Statement............................................ 15
Written Testimony............................................ 18
Spraker, Ted:
Opening Statement............................................ 46
Written Testimony............................................ 51
THE CHALLENGES AND IMPACTS OF FEDERAL REGULATIONS AND WILDFIRE
MANAGEMENT ON OUTDOOR RECREATION, HUNTING AND FISHING OPPORTUNITIES,
AND TOURISM ON PUBLIC LANDS ON THE KENAI PENINSULA
----------
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
U.S. Senate
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
Kenai, AK
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:00 a.m. AKDT
at the Challenger Learning Center, 9711 Kenai Spur Highway,
Kenai, Alaska, Hon. Lisa Murkowski, Chairman of the Committee,
presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. LISA MURKOWSKI, U.S. SENATOR FROM
ALASKA
The Chairman. Good morning.
We will call to order this field hearing of the Senate
Energy and Natural Resources Committee. I would like to thank
you all for coming this beautiful morning, particularly the day
after a long, Memorial Day weekend.
We thank all those who have served our country and hope
that the weekend was one that was filled with meaningful
tribute.
We are here in Kenai today to review the management of our
national forests and our other public lands and review what we
can do, together and responsibly, to make them healthy and
productive for the people who rely on them for their
livelihoods, whether it is tourism, whether it is guiding,
whether it is their access to recreation, to fishing, to
hunting.
We have some serious work in front of us. I think we
recognize that over the past 20 plus years or thereabouts the
management of our forests, of our public lands, or perhaps the
lack of management, translates to a very real threat to the
health and safety of communities, not only in our state, but
across our nation.
According to the Forest Service, up to 82 million acres of
forest lands need some kind of restoration treatment because
they are at high risk for severe wildland fires. Of those,
twelve and a half million acres require some level of
mechanical thinning to deal with these overly dense stands.
The Forest Service has also designated 45 million acres as
insect and disease epidemic areas that are in need of
treatment. Here in Alaska and certainly here on the peninsula
we know about the spruce bark beetle and the infestation that
decimated some six million acres, including 1.3 million acres
and more than 30 million spruce trees on the peninsula.
If it is not enough to kill the trees, what then happens is
that those dead trees become fuel for the devastating wildfires
that we see. Everyone who fought and endured the 2014 Funny
River Fire which consumed 156,000 acres knows that far too
well.
I have had an opportunity to go out and to see the
devastation that was brought about by not only the Funny River
Fire but the other fires that we have had around here, like the
Card Street Five near Sterling. We have seen the impacts, and
in many ways we are still dealing with the aftermath of that
blaze. The hot spots or the holdovers, the carryover fires from
not only last year's Card Street but Funny River in 2014, the
wildland firefighters were called out to address that just in
this past week.
We have with us this morning Chris Maisch, who is the State
Forester and the Director for the Alaska Department of Natural
Resources (DNR). We will hear a little bit from him this
morning about where we are with fire threat and the fire
season. But I think it is a reminder to us that when we do not
manage our forests, when we have, again, levels of infestation,
when we have fuel that is essentially sitting on the forest
floor, it does pose a threat.
We recognize the importance of installing fuel and fire
breaks to try to keep the fires smaller in order to reduce that
threat. It is not only important to our protection of life and
property for those who live here but something that we keep in
mind as we worry about the safety of those who are fighting
these fires.
Yet as we recognize what is going on with greater incidents
of more devastating fires and the lack of management, what we
are seeing is less and less harvesting from our forests. The
annual timber cut in the State of Alaska has dropped by more
than 80 percent.
When you have those timber harvesting jobs leave, it is not
just the jobs that are lost, it is the impact on the local
schools. It is the impact on the local budget shortfalls.
Clearly there is a ripple effect when you think about our
failure to properly manage forests.
Basically, under our Federal Government's current
practices, we are losing our forests to insects, disease and
wildfires instead of responsibly managing and harvesting them.
It is putting local communities at both physical risk and
economic disadvantage.
I was down in Ketchikan, Sunday and Monday and had an
opportunity to meet with some of those in the struggling timber
industry. They reminded me that our forests work if our
foresters are able to work.
Yet it seems that you have a situation, at least within the
Forest Service, and it was what the former Chief of the Forest
Service, Dale Bosworth, said. He describes it as ``analysis
paralysis.'' Basically that progress today has been redefined
by completion of a process rather than implementation of almost
any project on the ground, and I think that we see that.
In the Tongass we have gone from more than 6,000 direct and
indirect jobs which represented 79 percent of all manufacturing
jobs in the state back in the early 90's, to just 550 wood and
forestry jobs today. This represents less than one percent of
Alaska's current economy.
Here in the Chugach, historically speaking, we have never
been a big timber producing area, but at this point in time, we
see almost no timber harvested for saw logs and only a handful
of workers remain to process mostly utility logs for biomass or
for firewood. That has driven the Federal funding from what
used to be called stumpage fees down to practically nothing.
Now we recognize that when we are talking about Forest
Service and Forest Service lands, it is multiple use. It is not
just managing for timber harvest. So you would say well, other
things are going well on our Forest Service lands. But that is
not what I am hearing.
We have many, many complaints from tourism, charter
operators and outfitters and guides that the Forest Service is
not offering enough new concession opportunities in most of the
Chugach. Both the National Park Service and Fish and Wildlife
Service, of course, have proposed or implemented new
regulations that seize authority from wildlife management which
was really one of the drivers of us for statehood. But they are
basically moving in a direction that takes that authority for
our wildlife management from the state and moves it under the
auspices of Federal management. We need new, revised and better
policies to fix all these issues, and we are working on it.
I would like to talk about a couple things that we have
been doing back in Washington to address these issues.
In this year's Interior budget, we have $1.6 billion, which
is $600 million more than last year, to make sure that we have
the resources needed to fight fires during what we anticipate
could be another really terrible fire year. What has been
happening as we have seen the increase of these very, very
costly fires, not only here in the State of Alaska but around
the country, if there is not enough money budgeted on an annual
basis for the Department of the Interior, what happens is the
fire accounts within the Forest Service will borrow from other
accounts to pay for fire suppression.
What that means is let's say, you have a big fire. We need
to pay to put out the fire. As we are spending money to put out
fires, we are taking it from those accounts that would make
sure that we are working more actively on thinning, to do
prescriptive burns, to basically manage the fires out there.
Last week I introduced legislation, a draft bill with
Senator Cantwell, who is the Ranking Member on the Energy
Committee, along with Senator Wyden from Oregon, as well as
both of the Idaho Senators. We are looking at trying to deal
with a longer-term solution. We addressed the wildfire funding
crisis and are working to improve Federal forest management.
What we attempt to do is fully fund fire prevention and
firefighting efforts. At the same time, we would stop this
borrowing from one account to another, because if you take the
money from Forest Service for what they need to do to provide
for the concessions or again, for the recreation accounts, the
timber accounts, the system just does not work. We recognize
that it is a system that is not sustainable.
I have also worked to beef up recreation funding for the
Alaska region through appropriations. We added $2.5 million
more than we received three years ago to address the budget
issues that the Forest Service has blamed for causing the
reduction in the new solicitation periods for tourism,
outfitter and guide concession contracts.
Just over a month ago we got the Senate's approval for
comprehensive sportsmen's legislation that I have been leading
for some time now. This has been included in the energy bill.
Probably the most pertinent provision of that Sportsmen's bill,
relative to this discussion today, is a provision that
guarantees that Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management
lands, remain open to hunting unless otherwise closed, open to
hunting and fishing and sport shooting effectively ensuring
that your public lands are actually public. This is going to be
an important aspect of what it is that we do moving forward,
making sure that we have access to the lands that we have in
our public holdings.
We are going to hear some testimony here about the
regulations that have been issued by Park Service and Fish and
Wildlife Service, again, the Federal regulators coming in and
attempting to determine what will happen with management of our
wildlife on these lands. We have been working as a delegation
to do everything that we can to slow down and prevent these
proposed rules from taking or staying into effect.
We have a lot to talk about this morning when we discuss
how to better aid health and management and benefit the economy
here on the Kenai Peninsula. We have a good panel of witnesses
with us, so I will end my opening comments and introduce the
panel.
To those of you who have joined us, thank you for your
interest.
Know that the way Senate field hearings or Senate hearings
in general work, you have invited testimony. These five
individuals have been invited to be part of the Committee
record. They have submitted written testimony that is
incorporated now as part of the record, we will have their
verbal comments, have an opportunity for questions and answers,
and back and forth.
That does not mean that you or those that might be
interested cannot weigh in and submit your comments, if you
want to submit them as part of the Committee record. So keep
that in mind if you have any interest on that.
With that, I am going to remind those who have been invited
to testify, we have asked you to keep your comments to about
five minutes. But this is our hearing this morning, and I am
not going to run a clock or a timer on you. I want to get the
conversation flowing. Your full written statements will be
incorporated as part of the Committee record, but again, we are
looking forward to hearing your contribution.
The first panelist to speak to us this morning is Chris
Maisch. He, as I mentioned, is the State Forester and the
Director for the Alaska Department of Natural Resources. We
were a little bit concerned that Chris might not be able to
join us this morning because this is the time of year that
fires start hopping across the state. But when I got on the
airplane coming out of Anchorage this morning and saw him
there, I took it as two good signs. First, he was going to be
able to participate, and second, that meant we were not in the
midst of some tough fires right now.
Next to Chris is a friend of many of you, of course, the
Honorable Mike Navarre, your Mayor for the Kenai Peninsula
Borough. I thank you for being in your Borough and here this
morning. Thank you for the good weather.
We have Cindy Clock, who has come over from Seward. She is
the Executive Director for the Seward Chamber of Commerce.
Hopefully we will hear something about the impact on tourism
over on the other side there.
Ricky Gease is a friend and President of the Kenai River
Sportfishing Association. We will have an opportunity to talk
about the recreational and the commercial end of what we see
with our fishing in the region and how that might be impacted
by fire or for regulation.
Rounding out the panel is Mr. Ted Spraker, who is with us
from Safari Club International. He wears multiple other hats as
we know, but I appreciate you joining us this morning and
speaking from the perspective of perhaps some of the hunting
regulations that we are seeing coming our way.
With that, Chris, if you want to start off. We will go down
the line and when everyone has concluded, that is when we can
have a little bit more of a dialog with questions and answers
going back and forth.
Welcome.
STATEMENT OF JOHN ``CHRIS'' MAISCH, STATE FORESTER AND
DIRECTOR, ALASKA DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES
Mr. Maisch. Okay, great.
Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the public. My
name is Chris Maisch. I'm the State Forester and Director of
the Alaska Department of Natural Resources Division of Forestry
and Past President of the National Association of State
Foresters.
I want to apologize. I'm still fighting a cold that was
precipitated by allergies for the record amount of birch pollen
that we produced in Interior Alaska. [Laughter.] And I
understand down here too. I never used to be allergic to trees,
so I'm not sure what's going on here being a forester and
developing this. But we set a world record for the amount of
pollen in Fairbanks on one particular day about three weeks ago
in terms of the highest quantity ever measured on a 24-hour
period. So if I pause to cough, I apologize.
I do appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today and
submit written testimony as the Committee entertains a review
of the complex issues surrounding wildland fire management and
the impacts to outdoor recreation opportunities during our
active fire season.
I also plan to offer some comments on the draft, Wildfire
Budgeting, Response and Forest Management Act of 2016, that was
recently made available for comment.
The mission of the Division of Forestry is to proudly serve
Alaskans through forest management and wildland fire
protection. The Division is the lead agency for wildland fire
management services on 150 million acres of land with the
primary goal to protect life and property.
The National Association of State Foresters represents the
Directors of state forestry agencies in all 50 states, eight
territories and the District of Columbia. State foresters
deliver technical and financial assistance along with
protection of forest health, water and wildfire for more than
two-thirds of the nation's forests.
As you know the 2015 fire season was a difficult one, both
in the nation and in Alaska. Over ten million acres burned
nationally with about 5.1 million acres burning in Alaska, our
second worst season on record.
The Card Street Fire began on the Kenai Peninsula in the
Kenai National Wildlife Refuge near the community of Sterling
on June 15th on a day that had red flag warnings posted. The
fire impacted many of the specific items this hearing was
designed to explore, including tourism on public lands, outdoor
recreation activities, especially fishing opportunities during
June and long-term impacts on wildlife habitat, hunting,
trapping and other subsistence activities.
At Skilak Lake, boat launch ramps and campgrounds were
closed at the height of the tourist season while numerous local
residents were prevented from enjoying the various recreational
and sport fishing opportunities that all Alaskans enjoy during
our brief summer season.
The Kenai River is a world renowned sport fishery and
visitors and residents travel to this region to enjoy the
various opportunities that can be found--provided there is not
a large wildland fire wreaking havoc with their plans.
How can we collectively do a better job of getting in front
of this persistent wildland fire issue to minimize the negative
impacts and risk to public safety while at the same time
recognizing the role wildland fire plays in this ecosystem?
I'd like to outline the multi-step process utilized in the
Kenai to address these issues, and it all begins with advanced
work and planning.
The Alaska Interagency Wildland Fire Management Plan is the
state level, foundational document that establishes initial
attack response at four different levels. Those are critical,
full, modified and limited and provide high level, strategic
policy direction to fire managers across all land ownerships.
It recognizes a need for close, pre-fire incident
cooperation and communication with land owners, communities,
land management agencies and the fire suppression organizations
to be well prepared for wildland fires. And in the written
testimony there's a hot link to the interagency plan.
After the large spruce beetle outbreaks across the Kenai in
the late 80's and 90's the concept of all lands came into
practice to address the issues associated with the
unprecedented acreage of dead forests and the changing wildland
fire risk including a new fuel type on the Kenai which are the
grass type, as we call it.
This concept preceded the now well-accepted goals
enumerated in the cohesive strategy which is a nationwide
strategy which has three primary objectives. Restore and
maintain resilient landscapes, develop fire adapted
communities, and provide efficient and effective response to
wildfires.
Communities across the Kenai Peninsula undertook efforts to
complete community wildfire protection plans and to implement
specific recommendations for risk reduction in their
communities. Adoption of fire wise principles decrease risk to
individual homes and businesses. Increased training with
cooperators including mutual aid agreements. Establishment of
agency crews, and other measures to increase capacity. And
finally, aggressive fuels mitigation projects at the landscape
level of which the Funny River Fire project is a classic
example of a project that really proved its worth in the 2014
Funny River Fire.
There is another hot link in the prepared written testimony
that goes to a very detailed scientific analysis of that effort
and how it can be duplicated in other locations both in Alaska
and across the country.
These actions, taken in concert with each other, build a
resilient and adaptive approach to reduce risk and deal with
large wildfire events in and near communities.
I have a few specific recommendations for the Committee's
consideration to improve or augment the activities I've
mentioned already.
First off, a simplified or streamlined process to allow
Federal agencies to act promptly to change environmental
conditions and funding opportunities to complete fuel
mitigation projects on Federal lands.
Due to the overly complicated and time consuming process of
completing NEPA documents for treating Federal land, the Funny
River project was completed on Borough and Native Corporation
lands just outside the wildlife refuge boundaries.
I would also recommend that providing funding for
communities at risk to complete projects that will reduce risk
and better prepare communities to survive and respond to
wildland fires. Prevention. Prevention. Prevention. The more we
collectively do to prepare for the incident, the better we will
respond, including less overall cost and it will improve
recovery timelines.
Next I'd like to comment briefly on the discussion draft
that was recently introduced by a bipartisan group of
congressional members. I'll offer a few points for
consideration beginning with fire transfers which represent
just one part of the broader wildland fire funding problem that
the Senator alluded to in her opening comments.
The discussion draft would allow access through a budget
cap adjustment for additional funding to fight wildfires once
all appropriated suppression funding, which would be 100
percent of the ten-year average, is exhausted. While we greatly
appreciate the effort put into the current draft to recognize
the need to address fire borrowing, the approach in the draft
does not entirely solve the problem.
As the ten-year average continues to grow with extreme
wildland fire seasons, the portion of the Forest Service budget
dedicated to fire grows. This results in less funding for other
agency programs critical to supporting Federal, State, and
private forests and further decreases the ability to improve
forest health conditions that reduce the risk of catastrophic
fire.
There's actually an example in the written testimony about
when fire borrowing impacts Alaskan projects. I'm not going to
go into detail on those because I think we're running a little
long here and I'll wrap up my comments, but I wanted to make
one or two more points about the discussion draft.
One of the key points is that our previous comments on this
topic have been less focused on funding mechanisms to which
disaster funds are made available to the Forest Service and DOI
and instead stress the critical needs to access disaster
funding to pay for catastrophic wildfires placing these fires
on par with other natural disasters. And this can be done via a
budget cap adjustment or access to the FEMA Disaster Relief
Fund.
An additional section of the proposed draft legislation
addresses the need for agencies to work with states on an equal
footing to certify aviation assets and pilots ahead of the fire
season. This is a positive step in streamlining current
operations and ensuring there are no delays during the fire
season for needed resources.
There are a number of other specific provisions in the
draft bill that would help address the issues raised in today's
testimony and at previous hearings, and we individually and
jointly look forward to commenting in detail on the proposals
put forward.
Once again, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before
the Committee on behalf of the Alaska Division of Forestry and
the National Association of State Foresters. I would like to
thank the Committee for its continued leadership and support of
efforts to both respond to wildland fire and to take necessary
actions to address the underlying causes through increased
active management of all forest lands.
That concludes my comments. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Maisch follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you, Chris. I appreciate it very much.
Mayor, welcome.
STATEMENT OF HON. MIKE NAVARRE, MAYOR, KENAI PENINSULA BOROUGH,
SOLDOTNA, ALASKA
Mr. Navarre. Thank you, Senator. I appreciate you bringing
the Committee to the Kenai Peninsula to talk about some of
these issues and for your leadership on the Committee and as
Chair of the Committee on issues that are important to Alaska.
You know, I want to deviate a little bit from my written
testimony that I already submitted and just talk about how we
got here and some of the instances.
The initial funding for the spruce bark beetle issue came
as a state grant, and it came back when Don Gilman was mayor in
1991 and 1992, I believe. I was Chairman of the Finance
Committee and he said, hey, we've got a big problem. He was
scared to death that Cooper Landing was going to go up in smoke
at the time because of the bark beetle infestation, so we
provided some funding. Did some fire breaks in the Cooper
Landing area, and Don Gilman led in that effort.
When I became Mayor of the Kenai Peninsula Borough the
first time in 1996 we were on our way to Seldovia for an
assembly meeting, and I was absolutely shocked at how many dead
trees there were flying over the Peninsula. I just had no idea.
And so, I contacted Senator Stevens and without talking to the
Forest Service or the state forestry or fish and game or
anybody, I called Senator Stevens and said hey, we've got a big
problem and need some money. He put a half million dollars in
the budget for us to put together a task force.
Then I got a call from a friend of mine who was working in
DC. She said the environmentalists down here in Washington, DC
are worried because they're afraid that this crazy Mayor of the
Kenai Peninsula Borough just wants to put together a plan to
chop up the entire Kenai Peninsula. And I assured them that you
wouldn't do that. What's going on?
So I recognize the need to talk with folks about what was
going on. I met with the state forestry and met with the
Federal foresters and then put together a task force that was a
very collaborative effort to, I guess, work with everybody,
environmentalists, Native Corporations, State, Federal and
local agencies, municipal officials, I guess, advocates for
fishing and hunting to try to make sure that we could identify
the problem and find a way to work through it.
We were successful in initially finding, sort of, the low
hanging fruit. Instead of focusing on the entire problem we
focused on the things that we could agree upon, a wildland
urban interface, making sure that there were fire breaks that
we could widen either rights of ways or along roads, power
lines, things like that that were already natural fire breaks
that we could use and enhance in order to protect some of the
more urban areas of the Kenai Peninsula.
We did put together a good plan, submitted it to the
Senator Stevens, and over the course of the next almost 20
years we received in excess of about $20 million to deal with
the problem. And with those funds we were able to both do
public education, implement a fire wise program, look at the
wildland urban interface and work together with a whole bunch
of diverse interests to address a very critical problem.
I guess the take away from that is the resources that we
were able to bring to bear. And that really, I think, is what
it boils down to at the end of the day whether you're fighting
fires or whether you're planning in order to try to mitigate
the damages when there is a fire. It boils down to resources.
And we've been very fortunate over the years to get
significant funding both from the State and Federal Governments
to do some aerial photography so that we can integrate it into
our GIS and do vegetation mapping to see how the landscape is
changing. But those need to be renewed in a continual grant
program so that we can identify where those changes are taking
place.
I brought my map here which shows why we should get Federal
funding for this because the yellow is the Federal lands on the
Kenai Peninsula. The Federal Government owns, by far, most of
the lands on the Kenai Peninsula and in Alaska. So it's
important to get resources.
It strikes me as we've seen the various fires, the Card
Street Fire, the Funny River Fire, other fires that have taken
place is that the incident command system really, really works.
Resources are brought to bear quickly. People work together in
concert to identify the problems to focus on how we solve the
immediate problem.
What isn't always the case is that those resources are
brought to bear when there is an incident, a fire incident, and
go away when there is no immediate threat. And sometimes it
hamstrings the efforts to try to find a way to plan for and
mitigate fires.
I want to talk a little bit too about what has been, I
think, cooperation and more recently, at least since I've been
Mayor for the last five years, between the Federal and State
and local entities. And I think that really is in large measure
part of the personalities, the folks who we have here. And I
want to say that I've had a good relationship with the folks
who manage the Federal lands here and the state lands here.
We've gotten, as I said, some very good response through the
bark beetle funding, the fire wise program, aerial photography
grant funding.
You know, we had an Elodea infestation that we managed to
have a very cooperative effort between State, local and Federal
entities in order to provide some ability to preserve our
fishery's resource, and I think that is critically important.
One of the things that it seems that we've sometimes run
into is constraints that come down from what seems like the
Federal managers in DC that is, sort of, a one size fits all
for Federal lands across the United States. And in Alaska, we
value our hunting and fishing, as you well know. And we also
value our natural resources and our recreation and our access
to recreation.
And the Kenai Peninsula is the--is really a place where the
entire state recreates. We get a tremendous amount of residents
from in-state, who come to the Kenai Peninsula to recreate on
State and Federal and local lands. And we also get visitors
from out of state and around the world, who come here. It is a
world renowned destination and with proper management we can
make sure that we protect it.
What I would like to finish with is, I think, that the
spruce bark beetle collaborative effort was a good example of
how working together and being able to talk together about what
the issues are that the Federal managers may be faced with from
whoever their bosses are in Washington, DC and making sure that
we can put a local flavor on it so that we can have local
expertise and local interest be able to weigh into it and have
a dialog with the Federal managers about what can and can't be
done or find innovative ways to either go around or to find
ways that we can, sort of, get the local influence factored
into the decisions and the management of our lands.
Again, it boils down to resources. And the resources that
are needed locally so that we can continue to integrate into
our GIS system information and aerial photography on an ongoing
basis that will lead us to adaptive management over time as we
see changes here where, you know, in some cases we're seeing
trees going to grasslands. And that needs to be addressed or it
becomes a quick way for fires to spread and at the same time,
it changes, sort of, what the habitat is for the wildlife
resources that we consider so valuable.
So again, Senator, thank you very much for bringing the
Committee to the Kenai Peninsula and for your leadership, and
that concludes my testimony.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Navarre follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you, Mayor, I appreciate it.
Cindy Clock, welcome.
STATEMENT OF CINDY CLOCK, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, SEWARD CHAMBER OF
COMMERCE
Ms. Clock. Yes and so we're going to take just a little
break now from these really heavy duty, serious subjects and
talk about tourism, specifically winter tourism. And thank you
as well from Seward for being here and for inviting me.
The Seward Chamber currently has about 315 members. Our
small, seaside town has a population of just under 3,000. The
Chamber partners with the City of Seward for economic
development using strategic doing.
Our current focus is on the Seward Marine Industrial Center
and alternative energy. You may or may not have heard about the
sea water heat pump at the Alaska Sea Life Center and that's
really our poster child in Seward for alternative energy.
Historically, Seward has struggled with a seasonal economy.
We're very lucky to live in such a beautiful place and
appreciate our thousands of summer visitors, but for years
we've been searching for ways to encourage people to visit in
the shoulder season, along with promoting and encouraging
winter tourism in our community.
Many of Alaska's smaller coastal communities are challenged
to maintain a viable and consistent, year-round economy. Those
without a strong year-round economic basis rely on the state to
assist their residents in maintaining basic standards of
living. Communities that can successfully maintain a year-round
economy with stable year-round employment support populations
that are generally more self-sufficient and rely less on state
assistance.
Because Silverton Mountain Guides, which could very well be
one of the new concessionaires that you spoke of, based their
heli-skiing operation out of Seward last year using BLM lands,
we saw a real boost to our local economy during the winter
months.
Aaron Brill, owner and operator of Silverton Mountain
Guides, and his client guests supported many businesses through
purchases of food and beverage, lodging accommodations, leasing
hanger and office space at the Seward Airport, not to mention
purchasing aviation fuel.
There's a huge opportunity for Silverton Mountain Guides
and hopefully other heli-skiing operations like them to grow
their business but to do so it is imperative they're able to
utilize United States Forest Service terrain.
Representing my Board of Directors and the Seward Chamber
membership I would very much like to see them be awarded
permits for United States Forest Service designated heli-skiing
exploratory zones including East Moose Creek, Mount Ascension,
East Ptarmigan, West Bench Peak, Mid Seattle Creek and East
Seattle Creek.
With the ability to fly inland at higher elevations and
colder temperatures and where the sun shines more frequently,
Silverton Mountain Guides could increase client capacity
upwards to 24 clients per week. The current DNR heli-skiing
terrain is located along the low coastal areas of Seward which
doesn't work very well during low snow years and warmer
temperatures like those we've been experiencing lately.
Silverton Mountain Guides needs to be able to expand the
terrain options for clients in order to have the ability to fly
inland at higher elevations for optimal snow, and we know that
means powder for these guys. Winter tourism is good for Seward.
And finally, I would just like to address the permit
application process. So anything that the United States Forest
Service could do to actually open up and then streamline the
process to accommodate new businesses to enhance economic
development in small towns like Seward would be very much
appreciated. As communities like ours are encouraged to stand
on their own by the State of Alaska during these very
challenging economic times, the business community seeks to
thrive and we know our Federal partners can help.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Clock follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you, Cindy.
Ricky Gease, welcome.
STATEMENT OF RICKY GEASE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, KENAI RIVER
SPORTFISHING ASSOCIATION
Mr. Gease. Thank you.
Thank you, Chairman Murkowski and for the opportunity to
testify today. It's really great to see you on the Kenai
Peninsula.
My name is Ricky Gease. I'm the Executive Director at Kenai
River Sportfishing Association. We're a non-profit fishery
conservation group here on the Peninsula. I also sit on the
South Central RAC, the Regional Advisory Council, for the
Federal Subsistence Board.
Federal lands comprise about two-thirds of the Kenai
Peninsula so agencies and the regulations do have a big impact
here. The Kenai River is the largest sport, personally-used
fisheries in Alaska and combined with commercial, sport,
personal use and subsistence fisheries here at Cook Inlet, it's
more than a $1 billion industry. You know, for outdoor
recreation, hunting and fishing and tourism, it's big business
here and it's a very important topic that we're covering today.
I want to cover three topics and they all have to do with
the one size fits all approach of, kind of, Federal
philosophical approaches.
And they have to do with wilderness. I'll talk about the
Cooper Landing bypass, kind of this passive instead of active
management. I'll give two examples with fire management and
predator control. Then I'll wrap up with funding restrictions
with the Endangered Species Act and how it impacts the Pacific
Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund and our ability to access money
for salmon research.
So first off with wilderness. You know, as an ecologist I
firmly support wilderness designation on Federal lands. I think
it's important to have a mosaic of different land designations
and wilderness is definitely important. But I don't think
they're as valuable in having an inflexible regulation that
ties the hands of our land managers so much so that it
discourages wise choices.
So let's talk about the Cooper Landing bypass. This issue
has been around our community for more than 40 years. It's been
controversial, yet there does seem to be light at the end of
the tunnel. Unfortunately that light looks like an oncoming
train. The two objectives of the bypass were to move highway
traffic around Cooper Landing safely and to move highway
traffic away from the Kenai River.
So what's the oncoming train wreck? The preferred
alternative by DOT is the most expensive route. It builds
another bridge across the Kenai River. It fails to move highway
traffic and more importantly, I think, the commercial truck
traffic that everybody understands here if you're a resident,
away from the Kenai River. It does not mitigate the high impact
areas such as the bend between Gwin's and the Russian River
Campground in Quebec, and it utterly disrupts Alaska Native,
culturally sensitive lands.
So after five years, you know, 40 years, why are we stuck
with this loser of a proposition? Because DOT both at the
Federal and State level wants no part of working through the
process of the land exchange that involves a wilderness
designation even though the Russian River Lands Act, passed by
Congress, authorizes this land exchange.
We have 80 acres of a rock mountainside in the Kenai
National Wildlife Refuge that has a wilderness designation. And
that's the start of the area that would be the top shelf or
what I think is the best route. And that stands between us and
a bypass that would bypass both Cooper Landing and the Kenai
River.
It would avoid culturally sensitive lands, and it would
come in at a cost of $50 million less. So we're going to forgo
being smart and wise and strategic just to avoid the worrisome
and dull and inflexible regulations of wilderness, and that
doesn't make much sense.
I'll add in some about fire management. If we do go in with
this preferred alternative and we have fire response coming
over from the Moose Pass area and they get stuck in the
bottleneck of Cooper Landing during July and we have a big fire
down here, it's going to be a pretty poor example of good
planning, when we have everybody from the personal use fishery
trying to get to or from the Kenai Peninsula and we have all
these emergency disaster trucks and everybody at the stage
ready to go and they can't get here to fight the fire. And
that's going to be real fun to watch.
Second thing I'll talk about is passive verses active
management, and I'll start off with fire management. I'll say
if and when the Greater Kenai/Soldotna area burns to the ground
in a catastrophic fire. I don't think it's a question of if. I
think it's a question of when. I think more than a few people
here are going to be thinking it didn't have to be that way.
And I'll just state this. There's a funny TV commercial. A bank
has an armed robbery. People are hitting the floor, panic
erupts, and the distraught bank customers are asking the
security officer to do something. And he replies, oh, I'm not a
security guard. I'm only a security monitor. I'm only to advise
you when a robbery is going to take place. And after a short
pause the guy goes, a robbery is taking place. That's kind of
what it feels like here. If a catastrophic fire sweeps through
our community, we're going to be feeling like a robbery is
taking place.
Now fire is an integral part of the ecology of the Kenai
Peninsula. We're willing to spend unlimited resources on fire
suppression and control once a fire starts, but we're unwilling
to implement proactive fire management plans before our fire
begins. And I'm not letting this, you know, fault at the fire
managers. We've heard enough examples that it's policy that's
doing this.
There's a no nonsense fire line south of the Funny River
Road that saved our community from a catastrophic fire, and
without that fire break fire would have spread through our
communities like a freight train. I don't know if this building
right here would still be standing today without the hundred
yard by ten-mile-long fire break that got put in on private
lands.
So what's our current protection plan for the North and
East of the communities of Sterling, Soldotna, Kenai and
Nikiski? Well-controlled burns are now actively being the case
on Federal lands. What large scale fire breaks are located on
Federal lands? Not much.
It seems as if the onus of fire protection is placed on
non-Federal entities is disproportionate to that placed on
Federal managers, and it's heading us for an eventual, large
scale disaster. Again, I want to say it's not the people
personnel on the Kenai Peninsula. But they have their hands
tied, and we need to do something to unbind those hands.
Second issue in terms of passive management I'll talk
about, and this is more from the perspective of sitting on the
South Central RAC and Federal subsistence, it's the concept of
predator control.
No issue in Alaska highlights the difference between
passive and active management on Federal lands like predator
control. The leave no trace wilderness philosophy has crept
into the Federal perspective on predator management and now has
become a thou shall not kill predators. Traditional wildlife
philosophy sets ranges for both predators and prey species in
game management. The population base goals are to ensure the
sustainability of both predator and prey populations and to
provide harvestable surpluses for hunting. Hunting provides
important food for Alaska families. It's safe to say that no
Federal agency in Alaska is a dynamic proponent of predator
control. Examples abound. Wolves on Unimak Island. The Federal
response to Alaska Natives of ``no, you didn't hunt that,''
when Alaska Natives talk about their traditions of predator
controls for bears, wolves and sea otters.
The most recent attempt by the National Park Service and
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to impose hunting restrictions
and bans through the Federal agency regulatory process instead
of using Federal or State game board management.
Hunting and trapping for all animals, whether predators or
prey, has a historical place in wildlife management in Alaska
and should be included on Federal lands now and into the
future. These activities have long held an important place in
the pantheon of outdoor recreation and tourism on the Kenai
Peninsula.
The last issue I want to talk about is funding
restrictions. First off, Federal funding is important on the
Kenai Peninsula for fisheries and fishery conservation and
habitat. We have the cost share program. It's an amazing
program. I think a third of the properties on the Kenai River
participate in that, and that's a great relationship between
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Alaska Department of
Fish and Game.
We have a fish habitat partnership that's been putting, you
know, important, strategic plans in place. We've talked about
the Elodea. The co-oper-ship between everybody, agencies and
ridding that of the invasive species on the Kenai Peninsula.
So let's wrap up with the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery
Fund. Regulations now state that research can only be for
salmon listed under the Endangered Species Act. This
restriction was added just a few years ago, and it's taken
about $10 to $15 million out of salmon research from Alaska.
Since no salmon has an ESA listing it effectively blocks
further salmon research in Alaska using Pacific Coastal Salmon
Recovery Fund monies, and it's that is the largest source of
Federal salmon research money available in the country.
Salmon populations through the North Pacific rise and fall
in cyclical boom and bust fashion following periodic changes in
ocean productivity that we don't really understand the
mechanisms. It makes no sense to research the salmon or it just
makes sense to research salmon to all phases of the boom and
bust cycles so that we can come to understand all the variables
involved in the population dynamics through the years, the
decades and the centuries.
Early run king salmon fishing on the Kenai River is now
closed for the fourth straight year. Gillnets as a subsistence
gear for king salmon are prohibited once again on the Kuskokwim
River and that's the largest subsistence king salmon fishery in
the State of Alaska.
Commercial and subsistence harvest of games on the Yukon
are fading from memory. It's been so long there since people
have done it.
We have a statewide king salmon crisis and other species
are also starting to show signs of ocean distress such as
sockeye salmon. This is about the second year in a row that the
third, three-year, ocean, sockeye salmon are showing little to
no growth.
We have halibut over the last decade. Halibut had the rate
of growth as to decrease by one-half.
We have sea birds. This is about the second year in a row
that we've had great die offs of common birds across the Gulf
of Alaska.
Something is going on in the North Pacific, and yet access
to research fronts through the Pacific Coastal Salmon Fund is
denied. We're unable to find out the reasons for poor ocean
productivity for salmon and these other species. The lack of an
ESA designation does not mean that Alaska salmon, in
particular, or king salmon, are not in need of help.
The lost economic opportunity for recreational fishing,
specifically for king salmon and halibut in Cook Inlet, are on
the magnitude of tens of millions of dollars. You throw in the
lost opportunity for subsistence, personal use and the impacts
of salmon restrictions and halibut restrictions on commercial
fisheries, here and statewide, and you have untold losses in
the millions and millions of dollars.
But these losses are not enough to override the regulatory
requirement for and ESA listing to trigger funding for salmon
research. That's just not a reflection of smart and responsive
government.
So the ESA listing is kind of like this wilderness and this
clunky, bulky, regulation, a one size fits all approach, from
DC imposed on Alaska, both the Federal and state managers in
Alaska. And it just doesn't work very, you know, sharply.
I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak to you
today and to the Committee, and we have some written comments.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Gease follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you. Thank you, Ricky.
Our last panelist this morning is Ted Spraker. Thank you
for being here.
STATEMENT OF TED SPRAKER, SAFARI CLUB INTERNATIONAL, ALASKA
Mr. Spraker. Thank you, Senator Murkowski and members of
the public, I appreciate being here. I'm really grateful for
the opportunity to address some of our local issues, especially
some of our local Federal issues that we have before us.
For the record, again, my name is Ted Spraker. Unlike
probably many in this audience, I'm not a lifelong Alaskan. I
was born in another state. I was raised in Wyoming. I've lived
in Alaska for 42 years and 38 of those years have been here on
the Kenai Peninsula.
When I first came to Alaska I was very fortunate to land a
job and have a career with Alaska Department of Fish and Game
where I worked as a wildlife biologist for 28 years, and I
spent 24 of those years as the Area Wildlife Biologist here on
the Kenai Peninsula.
After retiring from the state in '02 I was appointed by
Senator Murkowski's father, Governor Murkowski at that time, to
the Alaska Board of Game. And the Board of Game is, as many of
you probably know, made up of seven members. We're elected or
we're appointed by the Board, by the Governor, and then we're
confirmed by the legislature to three year terms. I'm currently
serving my fifth term, and I'm the Chairman of the Board of
Game and I have been for the last couple terms.
However, this morning I'm only representing the interests
of Safari Club International (SCI) as I testify to some of the
local concerns related to declining wildlife populations,
restrictions to access and lack of protection from wildfires as
it relates to a healthy forest.
At this time, I'd like to introduce Spencie Neschert.
Spencie is the local President of SCI. We flipped a coin to see
who was going to testify. I'm not sure if I won or lost, but
I'm glad to be here. I think I won to be here to testify this
morning. I'm very grateful to be here to talk to you folks,
especially to the Committee.
I'd like to focus my comments on the Kenai National
Wildlife Refuge that comprises about 70 percent of the game
management unit that we're in right here. This is 15A. And if
you have the opportunity to read my written testimony, you will
know that the Kenai National Moose Range was assimilated into
ANILCA as part of the new Kenai National Wildlife Refuge by the
addition of about 200,000 acres of Federal land.
The purposes of the expansion and inclusion of the Moose
Range into the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge are there's three
prominent goals that they have. A is to perpetuate a nationally
significant population of moose, B is to protect populations of
fish and wildlife and their habitats including moose and other
mammals and water fowl, and three is to provide opportunities
for wildlife-oriented recreation in a matter consistent with
the purposes specified in subparagraphs A and B.
Now let me take you back quite a few years. In the early
70's the refuge, this Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, then it
was the Moose Range, was clearly known as a leader in
developing and implementing techniques to enhance habitat for
moose and a variety of other species that depend on early
serial stages of forest growth.
In fact, in the early 70's I attended an international
moose conference. It was held in Seward, and one of the
featured events of this international moose conference was a
field trip near the refuge to look at the techniques that they
were using to enhance habitat for moose. They were, without a
doubt, the leaders and known worldwide for habitat that was
done on the Kenai. This leadership role halted in 1976 when the
service changed their policy from a proactive agency to a more
passive management approach, where we are today.
I've also, in my written testimony, included a peer
reviewed paper that outlines some of the issues addressed in
the early 90's as far as habitat and moose and where the
population may go, that was written by the current refuge
manager. I don't know if he is here today. Perhaps he is. He is
here today. The Refuge Manager that wrote this is here today. I
would encourage you to look at this manuscript or this paper,
because it outlines exactly what they thought in 1991. And the
clear message was if habitat enhancement is not continued moose
numbers will plummet, and they certainly were correct.
I'd also like to direct you to the service's comprehensive
management plan. If you have a chance to read that, it's very
informative, and they have a goal in there to enhance 5,000
acres annually.
And in my interpretation and that of the SCI, I don't think
this should be used as with the wildfire. It should be used as
acreage that can be counted as this 5,000 should be enhanced
because wildfires don't always happen in the best places to
benefit, not only the wildlife but protecting people and so
forth whereas enhanced areas through prescribed burns,
suppression and so forth do.
There's also a goal in that. It's called a CCP, the
Comprehensive Conservation Plan, that addresses a goal of
maintaining about 3,600 moose in this sub unit, 15A.
Presently our moose population is in severe decline. In the
early 80's state biologists estimated about 4,300 moose in game
management Unit 15A. In a similar study in 2015 found about
1,200 moose, about a quarter, less than a quarter.
I also looked at a comparison of a five-year period in the
early 80's as far as for local harvest, and during that time
hunters took about 293 moose per year. I also looked at the
last five years, and the last five years the average has been
22 moose with a range of four to 35. I want to tell the public
and the Senator, people have pretty much abandoned hunting
moose on the Kenai because our moose numbers are so low.
Now that the moose population is less than a quarter in
size compared to 30 years ago, predators are now accelerating
the decline. We now have what is called a predator pit where
regardless of how much the area is enhanced, the habitat is
enhanced for moose, the moose population will not recover until
the impact of predation is temporarily reduced. But the Service
refuses to allow effective predator control although there are
strong proponents of their own predator control as long as it
doesn't include wolves or bears. Additionally, trappers willing
to harvest wolves to benefit moose survival have been saddled
with very restrictive regulations on this refuge.
You know, a comparison was made by a colleague of mine when
we talked about predator pit and habitat enhancement and the
debate between predator/prey relationships and so forth. And
the comparison was that creating more habitat for moose
population in a predator pit is like trying to fill a water
bucket without patching the hole in the bottom because it
really--you have to have both. You really can't do with one
without the other.
And another colleague, a couple years ago when we were
involved in a moose calf study here on the Kenai, made the
comment that habitat enhancement in 15A would just provide for
fatter moose for the wolves to eat. [Laughter.] I think he was
exactly right. The Service's policies are not perpetuating
significant moose population and by law they're required to do
so.
And until the Service has passed its management policies
driven by the preservationist ideology of natural diversity and
biological integrity are removed, no one should have any hope
that the moose population will recover. Restoring moose numbers
will not only provide additional animals for locals to harvest
for food security, but will provide moose for viewing and prey
for predators.
Senator, there's just a little bit more I'd like to talk a
little bit about public access.
The refuge, I'll have to proudly admit that they do an
excellent job when it comes to maintaining trails for hiking,
for canoeing. There's a lot of camping areas that are excellent
camping areas on the Kenai.
The one place I think we're lacking is just public roads,
gravel roads, where people can access the refuge. There's
several gravel roads on the Kenai, all of which are in 15A. One
of them is the Skilak Loop which is maintained a little bit in
the summertime, not in the winter. There's good fishing there
in the wintertime. It's difficult to get to if we have a normal
winter with lots of snow.
But the one I'm really concerned about is Mystery Creek
Road. Mystery Creek Road is about 12 miles long. It's a gravel
road. It's used extensively in the fall by hunters. I think,
and SCI has talked about this, it could be open from the first
of May through the end of October. Now the refuge has a design
plan right now to improve the access to that where you turn off
from the highway because it's really steep. If there's snow on
the road like there is sometimes in October, you slide down the
hill and you run into the gate which has been done. I think the
gate just could be moved a little further down the road where
it's flat. I think the gravel that's going to be used to
improve this access point should be put on the road, improve
the road. There's also several lakes off of Mystery Creek. If
the refuge was willing to provide some camping areas and access
to those, I think those would be really appreciated by the
local public and would also remove some of the crowding or
reduce some of the crowding effort that we have with other
campgrounds and other fishing areas that we have on the Kenai.
One last thing about public access as far as the Mystery
Creek Pipeline Road. There's three airports. There's three
airstrips on that road. There's only one that's open to the
public. The other two are pretty much overgrown.
And the one that is open, although it provides good water
fowl hunting, there's a cabin there. It's the trickiest one to
land on, and the other two, I think, should be cleared and open
for public use as well.
As far as wildfires, there's certainly been a lot said
about that. But in the past decade the peninsula has witnessed
several large wildfires, largely human caused. The refuge,
along with state and U.S. Forestry and other agencies, have
certainly done an excellent job battling these threatening
wildfires to minimize property loss, but the communities of the
peninsula are still far away from being safe.
And there's been years of talk that there's been very
little action as far as building these fire breaks. And one of
the things I'd like to point out is there's another purpose to
prescribed burn and fire breaks and so forth in addition to
wildlife--wildfire protection. And in addition to the loss of
habitat at high mortality due to predation on moose, about 200
moose are killed annually on local roads.
And as the moose numbers drop animals killed by vehicles on
roads have become a significant contribution to this decline
plus high property loss, human injury, including some
fatalities. If we can clear these fire breaks and do it wisely
and do it in the proper areas, in the proper habitat types,
there is an opportunity to encourage moose to not use our roads
so much, to make areas more available to moose and habitat
available and attract moose away from our highways. Because
unfortunately right now, about the best moose habitat on the
Kenai is along our highways because of the Department of
Transportation's four or five year cutting program. So
hopefully we can do fire breaks, and hopefully they're done
wisely and done in the right places, in the right habitat
types.
I know the Senator has referred several times to the
Federal public lands as ``open until closed.'' In our opinion
the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge has clearly adopted a
philosophy of ``closed until open.'' And we sure hope you
address some of these issues, provide for more access.
And as a hunting organization, conservation organization
that supports hunting, we're just very hopeful that this
Committee can address some of these issues here on the Kenai
and other places in Alaska. We have a lot of predator control
issues across the state where hunters are not having an
opportunity to harvest game because of a lack of predator
control and trying to get these predators and prey in somewhat
a balance.
I want to point out one that hasn't been talked about and
that's the Western Arctic Caribou herd. A lot of that is
Federal land. That herd is going to be counted again this
spring. If it goes below 200,000 the intensive management
program kicks in place. If that kicks in place, there's going
to be a lot of reduction in hunting. The only way to correct
that is probably to reduce, temporarily, the number of wolves
preying on caribou and almost all of that is BLM land/Federal
land.
So the battle is about to begin, and that is a huge issue
for food security in Western Alaska for a lot of our residents.
So, I know I've gone more than my five minutes, Senator.
Thank you very much for the opportunity. I really appreciate
it.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Spraker follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you, Ted.
Well, thank you. There is lot of good information out on
the table. We have got about an hour or so to have some further
discussion and build out some of the topics that you have each
raised.
Let's start with just, perhaps, a more specific focus on
fire, because when you think about the economic impact of fire
in a region like the peninsula here whether it is the impact on
your tourism, you have folks that have a reservation to come
down and go out fishing or go over to a cruise out of Seward
and you are shut down because of smoke. You have the lost
revenue that comes from cancellation of bookings. You have just
the reality of that economic impact. But when you think about
what it means beyond the actual fire itself, smoke in a region,
perhaps temporary road closures.
When the habitat has been impacted, whether it is along our
streams and that is impacting habitat where our fish are coming
up or now have no place to really feel safe as they are moving
in and out. Whether it's the impact to the land that creates
the brows. The impact on our hunting and fishing and those
opportunities well beyond the actual fire itself. The impact
that you have when you have actual property loss.
We are going to start off with you, Chris, in terms of the
road blocks that you see that prevent the various land
management agencies from really dealing with the hazardous
fuels reduction that we know has to take place in order to
reduce the risk, to move forward with whether it is a level of
timber harvesting, thinning or the fire breaks that we have
talked about.
What is it that is holding us back? We have talked a little
bit about having the appropriate resources, and we recognize
that at the end of the day so much of this comes down to money.
But we have also seen situations where, even if you had the
money, you have regulatory road blocks. You have got to go
through your various NEPA analysis before you can move forward
with that road, with that fire break.
Talk to me a little bit about what we can do better to
prevent these really significant fires that then have such
consequential economic impacts to a region like the peninsula?
What do we need to be doing resource wise, regulatory wise and
just in the bigger picture?
Mr. Maisch. Okay, thank you, Madam Chair. I'll do my best
to----
The Chairman. I don't know, can you folks hear him in the
back okay or do we need the mic? You are good? Okay.
Mr. Maisch. You're good? Okay.
Well there's a quite a number of things we need to do to
help address these issues, and a lot of it has been touched on
here by the speakers today.
I would emphasize a couple of key points. I did make the
point about the NEPA and the planning process, as you've heard
from others about the whole planning process situation. And I
would go back to the Funny River fuel break project. And I
refer to these as fuel breaks. I know everyone here has been
referring to these as fire breaks, and to a fire person there's
no such thing as a fire break.
A fuel break is probably the term we like to use because
even with a fuel break, fires on the Funny River Fire when that
wildfire approached that we lit the burn out. We had a lot of
spots that went all the way over that very large fuel break
which we were able to catch because we could see them. We had
access. We had aviation resources.
So I know what you mean when you say fire break, but it
sends a false sense of security, I think, sometimes to the lay
person that may not be familiar with it. They think there's a
fire break there. It's not going to cross it. But that,
unfortunately, is not the circumstance.
The Chairman. Okay.
Mr. Maisch. So with that Funny River project one of the key
things there is I know in some of the legislation that's put
forward to help Federal agencies do a better job is categorical
exclusions for certain projects.
The problem with most of the CX projects, as they're known,
is that the treatment sizes are probably too small. They're
really a postage stamp treatment in a landscape that needs a
lot larger scale approach. And again, that particular fuel
break is a pretty good example of that.
Our fire managers have talked a lot about the lands here on
the Kenai. And we would really like to see a system of fuel
breaks and a shaded, more complete, kind of, an in depth
defense, if you would, between the Federal lands and the
communities that are up against these Federal lands.
Because a lot of the fires, I keep looking at this map
that's sitting right here that the Mayor has that shows the
fire scars over the past years on the Kenai Peninsula. And a
majority of them start on the Federal landscape and they
spread, you know, to various portions of the peninsula.
So I think to help communities have at least a sense of
comfort that we are aggressively doing something to treat fuels
and to provide a reasonable chance of success should a fire
start and we are trying to protect a community like happened
with the Funny River situation.
The other aspect I noticed with Federal agencies is they
have really lost, in many cases, capacity to actually do
projects themselves. They have to rely on partners like the
states. Good Neighbor authority is a good example of an
authority that's help, to some degree in the country, with
addressing projects that the Federal agencies can't perform
themselves.
Again, the Funny River project was a good example where the
state agency actually performed the work. The funding came
through Federal sources, but that work also had to be done on
private lands and rural lands which was good that the Borough
and the private landowners stepped forward.
To my thinking that should have really been on the Federal
side of the line where that project actually occurred. But we
didn't do that because of some of the NEPA challenges that we
would have had to have gone through. And in fact, if we would
have tried to do a NEPA process, that fuel break would have
never been put in place in time to serve the purpose that it
did just two years ago.
The Chairman. Well of course, that is the great frustration
here because the fire could care less whether this is Federal
land or private land or State land. The expectation, I think,
from the public is all those involved, Federal, State, local,
tribal, whatever, wherever, whoever you are. It does not make
any difference that we have some way to work collaboratively in
the event of these disasters.
We talk a lot about interagency cooperation and
collaboration. In your view, do we have some good examples?
I think many of us look to the Funny River Fire as an
example where there was some pretty good coordination. If there
is any grumbling about who was the most difficult partner? What
I am hearing it is always the feds that were the more difficult
partner.
So the question that I have is, again, and I appreciate
what you are saying about making sure that we have got an
opportunity for larger scale approaches with categorical
exclusions, but how can we make sure that that Federal partner
is not the one lagging behind?
Mr. Maisch. Right, not an impediment.
Well I think on that point, you know, a landscape scale
NEPA analysis would be one tool, potentially, to approach this.
Where if you have to do NEPA, which we will if we're doing
Federal projects on Federal land, at least clear a very large
landscape so that you can tier multiple projects out of that
one analysis so you're not continually doing additional NEPA
each time you propose a project.
The Chairman. Right.
Mr. Maisch. And there's some examples of that around the
country where they're attempting to do that right now in Prince
of Wales with a landscape scale analysis, in that case for
timber sales as opposed to fuel mitigation work. And there's
some other examples around the country where places have tried
that approach.
I have to say that, really, the Kenai is a very good
example where we've had a lot of good interagency cooperation.
The Federal agencies have been the best, I think, that they can
with the toolbox they currently have in place. Although, I do
think they lost capacity in their ability to actually do these
projects on the ground.
And that's worrisome. We see that both in the Forest
Service, and we see that across a lot of the different Federal
agencies. I think you alluded to some of that with your
discussion about management on the refuge.
So I'm not quite sure what the answer to that particular
point is, but that is definitely an observation from our point
of view.
The Chairman. Let me ask, and I will tie the Mayor in on
this because I think we recognize that there is a host of
different things that can make the threat of fire be even more
daunting. One is just not managing, but when you have an
epidemic like we had with the spruce bark beetle some years
ago, you could see that coming. You could see that coming and
you knew that we were going to be paying for this with a
lightning strike that was just placed in the wrong spot or
somebody who is out in the woods and was being a little bit
careless.
We can pray for cool, wet weather, but that is not a very
good policy, really, when we are talking about how we can
improve forest health. So when it comes to limiting the damage
that we can see from something like a spruce bark beetle, and I
understand that we are actually looking at a new, it's not a
beetle coming in, it is some kind of an aphid, and it is
causing the needles to literally turn brown and drop to the
ground. We all know that you light that on fire and it is just
like popcorn going off. I am not one who thinks that we are out
of the woods when we think about the impact of insects and how
they are, again, adding more tinder to the forest floor.
Outside of, perhaps, spring, which I do not know that this is
possible, how can we work better, and again more
collaboratively and smarter, in dealing with some of these
forest health issues?
Mayor, I am going to put you on the spot on this one
because you have talked a lot in your testimony about what $20
million in Federal dollars did to help reduce fire hazards. I
want to know what you think we can do in the Borough to help
continue to reduce the risk of wildfire.
I am going to throw this one at you because we learned just
last week there was a call from one of my staff to the Forest
Service Washington Office. We were told that there were not any
projects needed on the Kenai because outside of 2014 the forest
areas in the Chugach seem quite healthy to them.
Now what do you do with that when everybody says, okay, you
guys are doing just fine, so we do not think you need any more
resources from within Forest Service budget.
I am throwing it out there to both of you in terms of what
can we do more on the preventive side whether it is working now
to work on things like fuel breaks, the larger scale
approaches. But what do you do when everybody thinks that we
are ``healthy'' right now?
Mr. Navarre. Well you could put a rider in a piece of
legislation and----
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. There you go.
Mr. Navarre. You know, I guess from my perspective it does
boil down to resources.
The Chairman. Take the mic there.
Mr. Navarre. Including the aerial photography so that we
can do some vegetative mapping, so that we know what the
resources are.
One of the things about the Funny River Fire that was
interesting was that the live trees were far more volatile than
the dead trees were. And I didn't know that, that the black
spruce were going off like crazy and identifying where the
various fuel sources are and then on Federal land, having some
ability. The NEPA process is slow, cumbersome and expensive.
I know it has to be done, but there's got to be something
that recognizes what happens more predominantly in Alaska than
anyplace else in the country and that is with all of the
Federal lands that we have, the urban/rural interface is
wildland urban interface, is it's all over the place. And when
we see these fires start on Federal lands and they don't
recognize boundaries. They move, they can move very, very
quickly and when we end up with a huge disaster everybody is
going to be pointing to the reasons why it shouldn't have
happened and that somebody should have done something.
So I think a collaborative process that's facilitated
between Federal, all of the various interest groups, that would
allow for putting a plan together that could, maybe even as a
Kenai Peninsula, we'd be happy to do it as demonstration
project to show why it's important to create an ability to move
a little bit quicker than is allowed for now.
I think one of the things that is sometimes frustrating,
well I know it's frustrating for a lot of people, whether it's
users, hunters, fishers or with Federal entities is we get, I
guess we get the response that it can't be done. Oftentimes
what it takes is folks who are willing, and I think the
managers have been willing to say, wait a minute. Instead of it
can't be done, how can we do it and what are the impediments to
responsible management of all of the land including all of the
Federal lands? So again, it boils down to resources to do some
of the mapping and the aerial photography on a continuing
basis. It takes----
The Chairman. How far along are we in the mapping would you
say percentage wise?
Mr. Navarre. We have a great system at the Kenai Peninsula.
We are constantly trying to update it. I think the last
photography that we have now is 2012. So we need some
additional resources in order to do some over flights again.
And the reason we do aerial photography instead of
satellite photography is that it, aerial photography, can be
shared. There's no impediment against or there's no restriction
on its use whereas with satellite imagery it's--there's more
restrictions on it.
So, either remove the restrictions on satellite and then we
could utilize that or else the aerial photography is the way to
go and it allows us to do high resolution where we can see the
vegetative map and we can identify where the changes are in the
landscapes. We can see where the high fuel sources are and
where the, I guess, where the changes are happening.
And then, as importantly, using that information in order
to put together a responsible management plan.
The Chairman. Chris, what would you add to that?
Mr. Maisch. I think I'd add a few things.
One in particular, a lot of the Federal agencies are really
focused on restoration of various ecosystems around the country
including in the Tongass it's focused on restoration of mostly
salmon habitat. In the far south it's long leaf pine. You can
go around the country and there's different restoration
efforts. And it's always perplexed me that on the Chugach we
don't actually have a restoration effort or at least an active
restoration effort.
The Chairman. Have we ever?
Mr. Maisch. We established forests that were destroyed as
part of the bark beetle outbreaks in the 80's and 90's. There's
been some activity, mostly on private lands and some state
public lands, but not a lot on Forest Service lands.
As you know the current forest plan is being revised for
the Chugach, and it's the one national forest, that I'm aware
of in the country, that does not have an allowable cut in it.
And to my way of thinking, you have to manage that resource and
have the ability to have some timber harvest to help restore
the forest to a healthy state.
So, I think a lot more could be done with the Forest
Service in terms of approaching restoration of this habitat. We
have grasslands that have established themselves that several
speakers have mentioned. That's a really difficult fuel type
forest because it's very light and flashy. It dries out quick,
presents a whole new level of danger for firefighters, and it's
also very difficult to reestablish trees once that grass type
has established itself. It's very difficult to deal with that.
So it won't be an easy task, but it's one of the things, I
think, that has to occur through this collaborative process the
Mayor has talked about. It's got to be all landowners. It's not
just the Federal landowners, but they're really a key because
of the amount of ownership they have here.
So----
The Chairman. Before we move off fire, I am going to ask
the question that everybody wants to ask you which is what is
the fire outlook for the Kenai Peninsula?
Mr. Maisch. Well, it was, for the first three months of the
season, so that's April, May, June, predictive services which
is our intelligence part of the fire operations up at the
Alaska Interagency Coordination Center looks at indexes around
the area, long-term climate issues, a whole variety of things.
And for the Kenai and the Mat Valley through the end of June,
it's a higher than average risk factor. And we've seen that
already with a number of starts that we've had in both the Mat-
Su and the Kenai, it's still really dry out there.
As the Senator mentioned, we've had several carry over
fires. One, a couple from the 2014 fire which is very unusual.
Typically, in a year we have maybe one or two carryovers
statewide. We've had 14 already this year statewide.
So that just is a reflection of less snowfall over a lot of
the state, a lot drier fuels. We've also had about 200 fires to
date statewide which is about on track for a normal season, as
we would call that. But a normal season means almost two
million acres are going to burn in the state.
We've had very light lightning activity so far, but where
we've had lightning activity, which is mainly out in McGrath,
we've had fire starts from that lightning. I think we had three
lightning starts over the holiday weekend here.
So that does cause me some concern that as we enter
lightning season which is June, we could see significant starts
from lightning statewide. Really, the next three weeks will
tell us how we're going to fair with that lightning part of it.
To date, out of those 200 fires I mentioned, only eight of
those are lightning-caused. All the rest have been human-
caused. So technically all of those fires would be preventable.
So that's really one of our key places that we feel like we
can make a bigger difference is on prevention, and that's why I
stressed some of that in my comments earlier.
So----
The Chairman. Yes.
Mr. Maisch. Let's hope it's a less than normal season. It
will be perfectly acceptable to me.
But 2004 was the tipping point for this state. We went from
burning about 800,000 acres a year to now almost two million
acres a year on average. So I think due to long-term climate
issues we have definitely seen a big change in the amount of
fire on the landscape and the length of the season.
So----
The Chairman. Yes, and again, praying for cool, wet weather
is really not a policy that you can bank on. Yet it seems that
sometimes that is what we are waiting for, or if you have got a
fire underway, we are just going to pray that the wind changes
and that is going to be our answer. We have much that we need
to be on alert for.
Let me move just a little bit and talk to you, Cindy and to
Ricky and Ted, on where we are right now with our Federal
agencies, whether it is Forest Service or otherwise, in terms
of some of the permits that our folks need whether you are an
outfitter, whether you are seeking to bring skiers up for a
great heli-ski adventure. We are hearing some real
dissatisfaction about the timeliness of getting these permits
issued. We are hearing that the Forest Service has again
limited or perhaps not opened up these general solicitations
for some of the concessions. So can you give me a little more
insight?
You have spoken specifically, Cindy, to the Silverton
Mountain Guides and their efforts, but are you hearing from
others in the Seward tourism business about the permitting or
application process for either conducting tours in the Kenai
Fjords National Park or in the waters around Prince of Wales or
Prince William Sound? Is this just limited to Forest Service?
How difficult is it across other Federal agencies?
Ms. Clock. Well as everyone probably knows Kenai Fjords
National Park really put Seward on the map in the middle 80's,
and there are lodges and other concessionaires that work. It
seems to be a fairly easy process for them to work inside the
national park.
The Chairman. Through the Park Service?
Ms. Clock. Yes, through the Park Service.
As far as with the heli-skiing, it may not be new to some
parts of Alaska but it is new to this area. And I think, maybe,
the Forest Service does need to just, maybe, change philosophy
or undergo a little paradigm shift where they shouldn't have to
go out and solicit for vendors. It should be an open permitting
process to where, I mean, why would they go out and seek people
to bring heli-skiers up into the Chugach? It seems a little
backward.
So it's not even that they wouldn't grant the permit. It's
that they, well, we didn't ask you to apply. So we're not even
going to consider it. That was some of the communications that
I got a hold of through a letter to Ms. Blackwell.
So it just, it seems not very conducive at all to economic
development. I know that it doesn't seem like a big deal to
bring 24 extra people to Seward each week in the winter time,
but it really is.
So that's--I don't have a lot of experience about other
guides and outfitters asking for permits. Right now it's just
the heli-skiing.
The Chairman. Okay.
Ms. Clock. Yeah.
The Chairman. Yes.
Ricky, did you want to weigh in?
Mr. Gease. Yeah, I just wanted to talk about two things.
One is I want to say that the process of the Kenai National
Wildlife Refuge has for upper river Kenai River guides in place
is a good process. It's concessionaire based. It's not a
transferable permit so whoever has the most amount of money
gets permitted. It's actually based on qualifications,
experience, and I think that's a great process to follow and I
want to give kudos to them for that.
You were talking about the Chugach National Forest. One of
the things that concessionaires need to be able to make use of
is infrastructure, and in Western Prince William Sound there's
been a wilderness study for 20 some years now. It's one of the
slow, slower moving studies that we have in the Federal
Government, and that's preventing public use cabins from being
installed in Western Prince William Sound that people, whether
it's the members of the general public or concessionaires, can
sign up and make use of.
I was a park ranger for Kenai Fjords National Park for six
years during the 1990's, and for the first three years it was
no and hell no are we ever going to have public use cabins on
the Outer Kenai Fjords. And then suddenly there was a rider
from Senator Stevens and voila, we had four public use cabins
out on the Outer Kenai Fjords.
The original mindset of the regulators of the
superintendent at the park was it's just not acceptable to have
infrastructure, public infrastructure, on this outer,
wilderness ``areas.'' And it's probably one of the best things
that the park has done.
The Chairman. Yes.
Mr. Gease. It allows visitors a safe and secure environment
to enjoy the wilderness experience. And if you don't have
people out experiencing wilderness not everybody is going to be
out there, you know, in their tent in rainfall and with
populations of bears, whether black bears or brown bears.
People want to feel those safe and secure environments, and I
think public use cabins are just one of the ways to increase
that opportunity and access into wilderness or remote areas
that are on Federal lands.
The Chairman. Is some of what we are seeing necessarily
regional but with the ease of either getting a permit or just
working through some of the one size fits all regulations that
we deal with as you have Federal agencies? Does it depend on
who your refuge manager is? Who is the district manager is?
Does it get as, I guess, parochial as that? Sometimes it is
good and sometimes it is bad depending on who we have assigned
to the region?
Mr. Gease. I think it does. I think people at the end of
the day, people in positions are doing their jobs and if they
have experience and they understand, I think, kind of, why
Federal lands are so important for tourism, outdoor recreation,
hunting and fishing. And you have regulators who are welcoming
of the public on Federal lands instead of an us versus them. We
want to limit access. We don't want you to go there.
But say no, we welcome you. We want you to visit these
lands in a safe, secure, accessible, meaningful manner. I think
that makes a lot of difference. I think at times you, kind of,
flip flop through philosophies that, kind of, filter and
trickle down through the government and some of it or people
saying that we don't want people on public lands and other ones
are very welcoming.
It's like going to DMV. I mean, is that going to be a great
customer experience or really crappy customer experience? I
think you've got both of those type of personnel and
philosophies within the Federal Government.
And from my experience on the Kenai Peninsula, I really
look with respect and admiration to those Federal officials
that have a welcoming approach to people accessing in a
meaningful way. For example, if you go up to Exit Glacier. For
many years it was a really crappy--I'm just going to be
brutally honest. It was a rock road, gravel road going out
there that would get wash boarded. And somehow some people at
the national park thought that if you struggled to get to the
wilderness, somehow seeing Exit Glacier was going to be a more
meaningful experience for you which I thought was a bunch of
caa caa. I mean really, it was just a stupid way.
And then once again, Senator Stevens got involved, I think,
and then the funding got in to pay for Exit Glacier and put in
a meaningful parking lot and so people aren't jammed on each
other and parking on the sides of the roads because it's a
popular destination. At the end of the day people were out
there and said, wow, this isn't so bad after all. It's nice to
have a road to go visit one of our beauties of our national
parks, and to see a crown jewel and to be able to walk up and
see a glacier.
I mean, so there's differences in philosophies. And I think
that one of the things on public lands is an approach, whether
you're somebody who is getting a guided experience or on your
own, is to have a welcoming experience from the Federal
Government on Federal lands as a citizen of this country and
from people all over the world to say, you're welcome to come
here and we've provided the infrastructure and access for you
to have a great experience. People come to this peninsula
because they can experience some of the best days of their life
on this peninsula on Federal lands.
That's how great this area is. That's why it's so popular.
You talk to anybody and they're like, wow, I've never
experienced that. I've never seen a glacier. I've never hooked
a king salmon, never had halibut, never seen whales. Wherever
they go across this peninsula you can have the best day of your
life.
I think it should be yes, protection is important. But we
can also do it in a way that we provide meaningful opportunity
for people who are visiting here.
The Chairman. Well that is a great advertisement for the
Visitor's Center here on the peninsula. We appreciate that, and
I think you are right. You can have one of your best days here.
One of the things that I hear from Alaskans, though, is a
frustration that Forest Service is different than BLM, is
different than Park Service, is different than Fish and
Wildlife Service. It is not unlike what we were talking about
earlier when you were talking about fire. Fire knows no
boundaries there. It does not care whose land it is tearing
across. But when we talk about access and public lands being
public, what I hear a lot of is that well, it means different
things if you are on Forest Service lands than it does for
instance on Park Service lands.
Some of what we saw back when the Federal Government was
closed for that period of time. Ricky, you will have to refresh
my memory on this, but there was some concern that if you put
in on the Upper Kenai and you are drifting down the Kenai, and
you move from basically the parts of the river that are
surrounded by refuge versus coming through into non-refuge
areas, you are subject to different rules, different
interpretations, a little bit different example than what I am
talking about between the various public or Federal agencies.
This is something that, as I am talking to folks, there is
a degree of frustration that they do not see a level of
consistency in terms of how we would define access for whether
it is the hunter or whether it is the person who is just going
out hiking, and they want a level of consistency there.
Ted?
Mr. Spraker. Senator, I'd like to offer a very clear
example of that from the hunter's aspect.
If you would like to hunt in Unit 7, which is U.S. Forest
Service land, and would like to harvest a bear using bait,
you're allowed to do it. There's no real restrictions. It's
pretty much wide open. I have participated in some of the
orientation programs with the Department of Fish and Game and
the refuge and U.S. Forest Service and so forth, and they
actually encourage people to come to Unit 7 and take bears.
They also allow them to take brown bears over bait which is a
real controversy over on this side on the refuge.
Now the refuge has, I think, a very well thought out plan,
although it's very restrictive. They only allow the taking of
bears using bait as a method in a very small portion of 15A,
and they do not allow the taking of brown bears. So that
focuses the effort.
If you want to take brown bear on the state land or the
U.S. Forest Service land, there's a real inconsistency in those
two. I know from talking to hunters it seems like that should
be a simple fix. The refuge should allow the taking of bears
because this is a difficult place to hunt bears because of the
dense vegetation, and the use of bait is a very successful
method.
It's also been proven that hunters can be very selective.
And one of the management tools on harvesting bears is to not
allow hunters to take too many of the adult females. That works
really well if you have a bait station you could take your time
and you can avoid taking females, and it's been shown that it
works.
So that's an inconsistency between Federal agencies that I
wish we could address. It would provide for a lot more
opportunity for hunters, and it would reduce some of the
confusion that hunters deal with, with regulations.
Because you mentioned floating down the river, it's the
same thing here. If you go on state land it's one regulation,
you go on Federal land it switches, and it's always confusing.
The Chairman. Let me continue with you, Ted, just relating
to the hunting impacts of these Fish and Wildlife proposed
regulatory changes.
I certainly share many of the concerns that you have
raised. We had a witness from Safari Club International speak
before our Committee back in December when we had a hearing on
ANILCA. She mentioned at that time that these proposed regs, in
her view, amounted to a takeover of our state's authority over
wildlife management. The concern was that while this is
happening in Alaska and clearly very state specific, the issue
that she was raising was a fear that this could set the stage
for similar actions in the State of Alaska. This was not just
looking at regulations in Alaska and the impact there on the
ground but again, this move by an agency to really insert
itself into the regulation, the management, of hunting that
would otherwise be left to the states. Can you comment on that?
Mr. Spraker. I certainly can, but I can't add much more to
it other than the fact that of the proposed rules and the bite
on everything else that's going on these days, one of the
things that as a, you know, long time avid hunter living in
Alaska, that's really frightening to me is that the authority
that the state has exercised for years in management of our
game is slowly being, not slowly, it's rapidly being taken over
by the Federal system.
And what is threatening to me is the process that they're
using. They no longer go to the state agencies and try to work
with those and compromise with those. It seems like what we're
hearing and seeing more of is Federal agencies can make a
ruling. For instance, the brown bear being on the Kenai. That's
a value judgment. It has nothing to do with biology, good,
sound science. We have quotas for those bears, we reach the
quotas, and the state shuts the season down.
The refuge came in a couple years ago and closed the brown
bear hunting on all the refuge. Everything else was open but
they had the authority to do that, and that's the frightening
thing to me is I see this moving rapidly throughout the Federal
system, to usurp the authority of the state to manage our
wildlife. That's the threatening part to us.
The Chairman. If that happens and we see that, kind of,
play out on the Peninsula, the impact to access to the lands,
the impact to the people, the businesses, the local economy
going forward, is effectively shutting things down.
Mr. Spraker. Yes.
The Chairman. Let me ask, again, when we think about the
economy here on the peninsula, so much of it is tied to our
outdoor spaces. It is our opportunity to fish, to recreate, to
hunt, to hike, to really take advantage of our lands. Again,
when you think about how we care for the lands, the impact that
we have seen because of fire has been something that has had
negative impact to us.
From your perspective, and I am going to throw it out to
all of you here, and again, I am asking you to look at this
from the Federal lands because that is what we are trying to
put on the record here, what do we need to be doing? What
should we be doing to promote a healthier economy here on the
Kenai Peninsula and from the perspective of whether it is
regulation?
Ricky, I will go back to your example of the proposal that
we are dealing with just for access into the peninsula and our
highway system and the fact that we have got some road blocks
that keep people from perhaps making that decision as to
whether or not they are going to come down to the peninsula at
all because it is going to be a nice weekend and the road is
going to be choked up and how we deal with that?
What else can we be doing to promote the economic health of
this peninsula?
I am going broader than our hearing agenda here so you
probably have not prepared for it, but this is my opportunity
to figure out what else it is that we need to do to make a
difference?
Go ahead.
Mr. Gease. I think it's just important on Federal lands to
realize the importance of tourism on the Kenai Peninsula. Kenai
National Wildlife Refuge generates the third highest amount of
revenues of any refuges across the United States. The other
two, the top two, are locations on the Mississippi River. They
get millions of visitors.
We probably get a million visitors on the Kenai Peninsula,
probably, hundreds of thousands do visit the Kenai National
Wildlife Refuge, and just their footprint here has a lot of
economic value.
So on that broad sense, I think, just generalized training,
more interagency cooperation. When I was a park ranger we had
interpreters who were the front line of interaction between
visitors on the peninsula. We had seasonal trainings for all
the agencies. It didn't matter if you were with the wildlife
refuge or with the Park Service, with the Forest Service, or
State parks, we all worked together, cooperatively, in
interagency, kind of, trainings. I think to see of more of that
and the continuation of that is important.
There's also sometimes some really small regulations that
prevent business and prevent commerce.
We look at sea otters. There was an article in the Alaska
Dispatch recently about why is the sea life center getting
inundated with sea otter pups? Well because protection of sea
otters has been wildly successful. [Laughter.]
The Chairman. Yes.
Mr. Gease. We're over the carrying capacity for sea otters.
It just makes sense that sea otters, you know, they're very
abundant now and some of them are getting lost because there's
no suitable habitat there. If you go to Cordova or Southeast
Alaska, if you see sea otters in the harbors, they're skin and
bones.
They're eating themselves out of house and home. In our
commercial fisheries in Southeast Alaska and Eastern Prince
William Sound, the crab populations are collapsing and we no
longer have viable, commercial fisheries because there's too
many sea otters.
Well, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has a regulation
saying that the only people who can hunt sea otters by Federal
law is Alaska Natives.
Okay, well, that tribe is a tribe because it works
cooperatively within the framework of a tribe. But these
regulations say that you have to be the single person, an
individual can only hunt and then transform a sea otter pelt
into something of artwork. There can be no barter between
members within a tribe. There can be no barter between a
husband and wife.
There have been people who have been convicted of saying
well the husband goes and hunts the sea otter and the wife
preps it. Well, sorry, can't do that. That's illogical. That
prevents business.
I mean, the first eight years of Alaska under Russian
colonialism was based on sea otter furs and trade. It's a very
valuable commodity that could be enumerable amounts of money
could be generated for Alaska Natives as to go out and hunt. If
they were allowed to barter with other members of the Alaska
Native community, whether it's within a tribe or between
tribes, to then transform that into pieces of artwork that
could be sold to tourists here or could be exported. It'd be
very, very lucrative. But because of that one regulatory
restriction that says, an individual must go out, kill the sea
otter and then switch hats and become an artist. Well, how many
people here are expert marksmen and expert artists?
The Chairman. I am. [Laughter.] I am just kidding, just
kidding.
Mr. Gease. But you're not Native Alaskan.
The Chairman. No, so moot.
Mr. Gease. I mean, traditionally there's separations of
work in tribes just like there are in any other communities,
and yet we fail to recognize that at a basic level of providing
access to a resource. And then we wonder why? Why are there so
many sea otters? Wow, the sea life center is going to go broke
trying to take care of all these sea otters. Well they're not
endangered any more.
The Chairman. That is good.
Mayor, what are you hearing from your constituents because
they are coming to me and they are saying Forest Service is
cracking down on activity as a small miner. We mentioned the
concessions, and Fish and Wildlife imposing these new regs. If
I am hearing them I have to figure that you are hearing them.
What else are you hearing that perhaps has not gotten to me?
Mr. Navarre. You know, I guess what I would--my observation
is that despite all of the complaints and sometimes angst, it's
focused. Those are focused oftentimes on specific incidents or
rules or regs that come out that create a hot button issue at
the time. By and large it's been working pretty well here on
the Kenai Peninsula.
The Chairman. Good.
Mr. Navarre. I say by and large. There's problem areas, and
I do hear about those.
From an economic standpoint, visitor industry is critical
to the Kenai Peninsula. You know, we're a microcosm of Alaska
and have, probably, the most diverse economy in the state,
without, I think, without question.
One of the things you pointed out earlier that I want to
focus a little bit on is you mentioned the changing landscape
when there is a huge fire. That is important because oftentimes
after the resources are immobilized and they are incredible.
It's an incredible process to watch when there is a fire
incident how many resources and how much expertise is brought
to bear in order to combat the fire, to protect life and safety
and infrastructure.
But it gears down just as quickly. Boy, when it's over they
pack up and they are gone, and what's left is the scars on the
landscape.
And with climate change and warming temperatures, I'm sure,
which mean that oftentimes we're already seeing impacts to
habitat. You know, one of the things that we've talked about is
streams warming and waters warming and what that does to the
habitat for salmon, the resources that we rely on. And when you
have the scars from a forest fire that denude, you know, right
up to the water's edge, that has ongoing impacts. While it will
regenerate over time, the reforestation efforts in those
situations are critically important.
So, the followup, oftentimes, I mean, we get the resources
when there is an incident. What we often don't get is the
resources before and after that are as critical and as
important as during the incident.
The Chairman. Well, you do not have the resources and then
again, you have people that are looking at an area and saying
well, really? Do I want to go down and camp in an area where
there are no trees anymore? It used to be a nice campground
area. It used to be a nice place to go fish, and they do not
come back. They do not come back.
Cindy, did you want to jump in there?
Ms. Clock. Well I just wanted to say, to get back earlier
to what you were saying about, you know, what could we do to
help economic development?
Wouldn't it be great to like, just sit down at a table
together with the United States Forest Service, with the Park
Service, with maybe the Mayor of Seward, maybe the Mayor of the
Borough, whatever community we're going to talk about and, sort
of, hash out the issues right there? And so, that would be my
preferred way to move forward as face to face conversations.
The Chairman. I think that is what the Mayor refers to as
adaptive management. [Laughter.] I am looking forward to how
you tailor these policies to a changing landscape, to social
concerns, to just trying to think beyond where we are today.
I think, oftentimes, the way our regulatory process works,
both State and Federal, sometimes the regulatory process does
not allow for a more nimble management. It is where it is today
and it is going to be that way tomorrow and perhaps next year
unless we force those changes.
I am just going back and looking through some of the things
that I wanted to make sure that I got on the table, and I
wanted to go back to you, Ted, regarding these regulations,
these proposed regs on refuges.
It was about ten days or so ago now I sent a letter to the
Office of Information Regulatory Affairs within OMB. We argued
in that letter that Fish and Wildlife's management regs should
be returned to the agency for more analysis because the true
economic impact of these regulations had not been sufficiently
captured.
As you know, because you are very engaged in this, the
letter that the delegation had sent initially to Director Ashe
was one where they made clear in their regulation that this is
not going to have any impact on subsistence. These regulations
would not have impact on subsistence.
So we sent a letter back to OMB saying, you have got to
relook at this because you have not looked at the economic
impact. These regulations, we believe, will impact subsistence
which is, of course, economically critical to so many.
I would like you to just comment on whether or not you
would concur that even though these regulations specifically
say this is not going to impact subsistence, when you manage in
an area or you regulate in one area, again, your wildlife that
is within the area does not pay any attention to whether or not
you are a Federal manager or state manager. It does not know
where the boundaries are and does not really care what
regulations we put in place. Can you just comment on the
subsistence aspect of what we raised in our letter?
Mr. Spraker. Yes, Senator, I'll attempt that one.
There's no question that these new rules are going to
impact subsistence. And we've talked a lot, several testifiers
have talked a lot, about proper management. There sometimes is
a need for reducing numbers of predators and so forth, the
impact of predation. What happened? And I already briefly
mentioned the Western Arctic Caribou.
The Chairman. Right.
Mr. Spraker. I think that's going to be the real, the proof
is going to be in the pudding there because if we're not
allowed we--as in Alaskan hunters, Department of Fish and Game
and the Federal agencies--if we're not all allowed to address
that in some proper manner to increase that herd of caribou
there's no place in the state where subsistence, I think, is so
vital for food security other than the Western Arctic Caribou.
Local residents kill between 12,000 and 14,000 caribou
annually. They don't kill them for the antlers. They don't
mount the heads. They take the meat. That's going to be the
real question, I think, in analysis when that plays out in the
Western Arctic it's what happens here.
You know, we're all looking forward to a count this summer.
We're hoping that count comes in higher. Some of the basic
parameters of game management are looking a little more
positive for it. But if they go the other direction and if
falls below 200,000 animals, subsistence is going to be
impacted because I don't think we're going to be able to do the
proper sort of management that's necessary, and that is
predator control. I don't want to mince words about it.
The way to address that is not habitat enhancement and we
can't do anything with the climate or anything addressed there,
but the one thing that we can do is we can reduce the impact
from predators. I'm talking about wolves.
The other thing that's involved there, and this is going to
be really interesting, is that I made a comment about trappers
who are saddled with a bunch of regulations here. Trappers have
never been able to reduce predators to any sort of a level that
will benefit a prey population. There's only been one case in
Alaska in the 40-mile herd where they came fairly close and it
was short lived.
If you want to do effective predator control it has to be
over a long period of time. You want to keep a base number of
predators in there. You don't want to take them all out, but
you have to reduce them over a long period of time to release
the prey population and let them build.
Again, those questions are going to be asked on this
Western Arctic, and with all these new rules in place it's
really going to be interesting to see which side of the line
the Federal guys fall on.
The Chairman. Ricky?
Mr. Gease. On this specific issue I would just point to the
record of the Federal Subsistence Board. Every Regional
Advisory Council wrote in opposition to the National Park
Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife regulations. Those are rural
residents, qualified rural resident users, for the most part,
and the overwhelming testimony, I think, in feeling the people
was yes, we may be qualified rural subsistence users, but we
also make use of the non-subsistence Federal lands and also the
state lands for hunting and fishing.
It's telling that the core regulatory body within the
Federal system, made up of primarily subsistence users, said
no, we don't like these regulations. That's a very telling
testimony, in my opinion.
The Chairman. We are going to wrap up the panel here. I am
going to give you one last opportunity to put on the record
what you think we may have overlooked or something that you
need to amplify, recognizing that what we were trying to do
today was to effectively review the management of our national
forests, of our public lands and what we can be doing together,
cooperatively, to make them healthier, to make them more
productive, for the people who live here as well as attractive
for the people who we want to bring up here, who will help us
with our local economy, whether it is enhancing our tourism
opportunities, whether it is guiding, whether it is for
recreation for hunting, for fishing.
Chris, is there anything that we need to amplify or
supplement for the record, certainly from the perspective of
making sure that our forests are healthy? You have brought that
perspective to the panel today, and I appreciate that. But if
you would like to add anything further to that and specifically
we will look forward to further analysis of this draft proposal
that we have put out there. As you know, we are still working
to build that out and to work on a final draft, final
legislation.
Mr. Maisch. Yeah, thanks for the opportunity.
I think that it's a great start and there's a lot of good
things in it, and I think we can help them make improvements.
So, we'd be looking forward to commenting further.
I think what I wanted to comment on I think we've covered
fairly well that we understand we need to try to get ahead of
the problem and there's many facets of them.
And one of those is having these Federal landscapes support
the communities and the residents that live in this landscape
and around the landscape. It's very important that we have
economic activity to allow us to prosper, and that's been
something we've been working in particular on in the Tongass
very earnestly for quite a number of years. The Tongass
Advisory Committee and that of the Tongass Transition
Collaborative are really holding the Federal agencies feet to
the fire that when they come up with a planning direction,
which they do pretty regularly on all these landscapes, that
they actually follow through, that they actually implement what
they say they're going to do and that we hold them accountable
for what they say they're going to do.
That's been a real focus on the Tongass, in particular,
about the timber situation and how dependent the economies in
South East Alaska are on that particular resource. It's been a
real frustration for many but that landscape has not been able
to produce the renewable resource that it has in sufficient
quantities to maintain a viable timber industry, so we've been
working very hard out there trying to work with the Federal
agencies to come up with new ways to engage them, to get them
involved with the communities, to really get them to feel that
they have an important role to support these towns and
citizens.
And it's a real mind shift, I think, for some of the
agencies to start thinking that way.
The Chairman. Right.
Mr. Maisch. And it's not an easy shift. We call it a
cultural change within the agencies. The recommendations the
Tongass Advisory Committee made, only about a third of those
will actually go into the management plan that they're
amending. Two-thirds of the recommendations we made have to be
things that we do to this transition process to ensure that
they're held accountable for what they say they're going to do.
So anyways, new ways of collaboration. Collaboration is not
an easy thing to do. It's been very difficult, and it takes a
lot of time and energy. But if people commit to it, I think it
can result in, you know, better days for all of us.
So, that's what I----
The Chairman. I appreciate that, and I appreciate what you
have said about the Tongass and recognizing that it is
different in the Tongass now than when I was a kid growing up
and living in that region. But when we talk about a transition
to a second growth and what that means, we need to understand
what it is that we have so that we know that a transition is
workable within the time that Forest Service believes it is.
We have been pretty adamant that we understand our
inventory first, and I think Mayor, that is some of what you
suggested in your comments here was that to be better prepared
let's know where our trouble spots are. Let's make sure that we
have got the aerial mapping. Let's make sure that we know what
we might want to do. It is, kind of, an inventory of our assets
here. So are there other things that we need to know?
Mr. Navarre. You know, I think a collaborative effort in
which we just continue to communicate because there are
conflicts between the different managers at the State and
Federal levels and as you know, the different agencies.
So good communication and you know, maybe even, as I
mentioned, a facilitated process where you can identify what
the impediments are to management instead of identifying what
reasons, what things can't be done, identify what needs to
happen and then figure out how you accomplish that in a way
that allows for it to be done in a little bit more efficient
manner so that you can make sure that we protect long-term both
access to the economies that go with our natural resources that
we have up in Alaska and on the Kenai Peninsula.
And I want to thank you again, Senator, for bringing the
Committee to the Kenai Peninsula and to Alaska for these
hearings.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Cindy?
Ms. Clock. Well, Okay.
So Chris mentioned that really scary word, change. We may
all need to go to some workshops to learn how to deal with
change, but I definitely believe in a proactive approach to the
world instead of reactive, so that would be awesome.
The other thing that I just brought to mind when the Mayor
was speaking was strategic doing. We ask three questions. The
first one is if we could do anything at all, you know, what
would we do? Then the second one is well, okay, but now let's
narrow it down and what can we do? Then the final, nitty gritty
question was what will we do? So I think once we get to that
question some awesome things will happen.
Thank you, again.
The Chairman. Thank you, Cindy.
Ms. Clock. Thank you for facilitating the conversation, and
I appreciate being part of it.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Ricky?
Mr. Gease. A couple things.
One is, I'll hammer the point, the first point I made about
Cooper Landing bypass and the thing about wilderness.
I mean, you've had your own share of battles with the
concept of wilderness in Alaska. But I really think this is an
amazing example where you have an Alaska Native Regional
Corporation and you have an Alaska Native Tribe who both oppose
going through their culturally sensitive lands. They're both,
kind of, timid on going up against wilderness designation even
though the lands that the Alaska Regional Corporation holds on
the Kiwi River, are our important brown bear habitat, important
king salmon habitat. It would be a great trade to put into the
Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.
We're timid, and we won't trade it for 80 acres on a rocky
mountain hillside so we can put a highway through. That makes
the most sense.
That that to me just, it's mind boggling to me why we're
going to put another bridge across the Kenai River, where it
will end up behind the Princess Lodge. We're going to come down
on the 45 mile an hour stretch. Then they're going to go
through the S turns, and you know, ramble along the Kenai for
five miles when it could, just as easily, been bypassed and
have the whole highway go outside the Kenai River and the
ability to have an accident.
Again, that's another one where it's not a question of
when. We've already had trucks come in to the Kenai River.
Anybody who goes driving between Kenai and Anchorage at
nighttime understands the amount of truck traffic, of double
trailer, truck traffic. It keeps our stores alive. It keeps the
economy moving and stuff. But such a basic access and
infrastructure need and we're being cow towed by our own
limitations of the concept of wilderness. And it's just amazing
to me.
The second thing I would say is that in terms of fishery's
research there's no greater balkanization, I think, of research
fisheries. We have fresh water. We have salt water. We have
U.S. Fish and Wildlife. We have nymphs. We have ADF and G. We
have universities. We have industry. We have NGO's. And it
would be very, very helpful to have some sort of coordinated
research in pink salmon because they go into everywhere
basically, State waters, Federal waters, fresh water, salt
water, and somehow get all the research embedded into a
technological format that you can start understanding the
limitations on where we have these bottleneck productivity for
king salmon and other species in the North Pacific.
It's a big area where we have changing climates. We have
changing productivity. It's cyclical. Sometimes we have booms
and sometimes we have busts, and to get a better understanding
of that I went to Stanford prior to the biotech revolution and
was, you know, we were still using the lots of crit DNA models
and getting graduate studies and----
When you come back 20 years later it's like, well this is
the genome of the human, and this is the genome of a brown
bear, and this is the genome of the sockeye salmon, and here's
our genetic testing labs.
For whatever reason in terms of fishery's research we have
not utilized technology and information to the extent that we
can visualize what's happening in the ocean to the extent that
we can.
It comes back to information technology whether it's
mapping, seeing these different areas. Where we can do here,
where we can go there, where we can be strategic? That's visual
information.
And in terms of visual information for fisheries, we're a
long way. And I hope we come back 20, 30 years from now, we can
visually go into areas and see hey, this is what's happening
out in the Pacific. We have visuals.
We think we can have a virtual reality where we're swimming
along and oh, this is the bottleneck because there's no--
there's none of this feeding group at this ecological level. I
hope we build in the systems that can do that, take advantage
of these new technologies that are coming out.
We would never have the advances in medicine if biology
never embraced technology. I think in our fishery's research we
need to make that same jump and really get an advance in using
that so that we can see systems that we can't see just by
themselves.
The Chairman. Okay, good suggestions.
Ted?
Mr. Spraker. Well, the last main comment that I want to
make is I would hope that your Committee will take a very
serious look at this new ideology. I think it's clearly a
preservationist approach to wildlife management. And in terms
of natural diversity and wildlife with integrity I think it's
going to just stop all management on wildlife refuges.
You know, a refuge is not a national park. You know, it's
here to use and it's here. And I think if we, we were talking
earlier about the revenue. If we could bring some of the 3,500
plus hunters that used to call the Kenai their area for
hunting, bring them back here, it would be a huge increase in
revenue.
In the early 70's, 80's, we used to have check stations on
the Swans River Road because there was so many hunters. Today
you go to those same roads on the opening day of moose season
and you can't even tell that the moose season is open. You may
see one guy with a camo shirt on but that's probably the same
shirt he had on the day before. [Laughter.] So, I mean, hunting
on the Kenai for moose is just a thing of the past. I'm not
going speak for the refuge, but I know these people. I've
worked with them. I know them well. And for the author that put
together a paper in 1991 saying that if we don't do something
about our moose population it's going to decline, I think
that's the same refuge manager that would like to lead the
recovery of the moose population on the Kenai.
And it's simple, the management of a wildlife resource is
very simple. It's getting through all the bureaucracy and the
permits and the authority to do it. That's the difficult part.
Managing moose is not difficult. Managing habitat is not
difficult. Just having the funding and the authority to do it
is the tough part.
We have some of the best scientists in the world living in
Alaska, working for State and Federal agencies that would like
to do their job, and I don't think they have a chance to do it.
And that's what I would hope that I could just leave you with
that thought.
The Chairman. Okay.
Mr. Spraker. Letting managers do their job will produce
wildlife for viewing, for people to hunt, for food security,
for predators to eat. We could produce moose. While people come
to the Kenai to see moose, they rarely ever see moose.
Thirty years ago there were a lot of moose. And there's
also a, kind of, a social carrying capacity. You don't want a
lot of moose produced in town. So that's where the smart
researcher, the smart manager does habitat work away from towns
to create areas where moose will live and be away from towns.
It produces road kills, problems with the moose in town, so
same thing with bears.
These things can be done. We just need the authority and
managers need to be allowed to do their job.
I want to thank you as well for being here today and
bringing the Committee to the Kenai. This is a real privilege
for us. We really appreciate you being here today. Thank you.
The Chairman. Well, thank you.
I thank each of you for giving up your morning and helping
us fill out the record here as we look to not only the impact
of fire and why it is so important to do what we can ahead of
time to make sure that the losses that are associated with
wildland fire are limited. Limited for a host of different
reasons, from an economic perspective, from safety perspective
and just from a management perspective. But also the
opportunity to talk about how we really can do a better job
working with the Federal managers of our public lands whether
it is Forest Service, whether it is Park Service, whether it is
BLM, all the various Federal agency, Fish and Wildlife. I think
we recognize here in this state it is not easy when you have
multiple agencies that you are dealing with, not only at the
Federal level, but at the state level. I know that the
frustration level gets very, very high. I know because I hear
about it as I am sure that your local leaders and your state
representatives do as well.
As we try to work through some of the challenges that we
face and some of the impediments to a stronger economy and a
healthier region and healthier communities, this is what we are
trying to do by peeling back the onion a little bit.
So thank you to each of you. I want to thank those of you
who have also spent your morning with us. We appreciate that,
and thank you to the staff that have helped make it happen this
morning.
The record will be held open for two weeks from today. If
you have anything that you would like to provide to the
Committee in writing, you can submit it by going to the Energy
Committee website.
I am looking for affirmation and I'm told no. Annie Hoefler
will be back there making sure that if you need more
information about where to submit and how to submit your
testimony make sure that you see her or you can also go to our
website.
But just so you are aware, this is more than just a nice
opportunity to have conversation with these folks. We actually
do take the input that we receive and we use this, whether it
is to flesh out more of the details on this draft legislation
that we laid down last week or whether it is how we move
forward in advancing either comments to regulations or if we
need to do measures by utilizing other legislative tools, say
for instance, through the appropriations process. We gain good
information here.
So do not think that this is just an exercise where we come
to town, listen for a little bit and then leave and do not do
anything with it. We definitely do take all of this into
account as we are formulating our legislation, our comments and
our input back in Washington, DC, and yours will be considered
and evaluated too.
Thank you for being here. Thank you all.
With that the Committee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:28 p.m. the hearing was adjourned.]
APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED
----------
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
[all]