[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 196 (Monday, December 11, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Page S18316]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         THE FOREST SERVICE GRINCH STEALING CHRISTMAS IN ALASKA

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I have one more short statement 
relative to another policy of the administration. I want to speak 
briefly on an issue that affects my home State of Alaska. It is coming 
to a head during this holiday season, but unfortunately, unless there 
is a legislative solution the problem will not end with Christmas but 
it will be a gift that will keep on giving throughout the year 1996.
  The gift is the policies that promote unemployment. The bearer of 
this unwelcome present seems to be the U.S. Forest Service. In fact, it 
is not too strong to say that in the small community of Wrangell, AK, a 
town I once lived in, the U.S. Forest Service is truly becoming the 
Grinch that stole Christmas and is stealing the hopes and dreams of 
many of the people in that community.
  The Forest Service, under the Clinton administration, has canceled 
the contract that provided timber to the town's only year-round 
industry, a small sawmill. The Service has also been unresponsive in 
putting up independent sales to permit the sawmill to operate. For that 
reason, the timber industry in southeastern Alaska, an industry 
dependent upon wood from the Nation's largest national forest, the 17-
million-acre Tongass National Forest, is being destroyed.
  People live in the forest. Unlike in many areas where you have State 
and private timber, in our part of the country, towns such as 
Ketchikan, Wrangell, Petersburg, Juneau, and so forth, are all in the 
forest.
  We have the situation, since the Clinton administration came to power 
more than 3 years ago, that more than 1,100 direct logging jobs have 
been lost, cutting timber employment by 42 percent. Environmental 
groups earlier this year claimed loudly that the economy in 
southeastern Alaska did not need a timber industry, that everything was 
doing fine. They should tell the folks back in Wrangell, that 2,500 
population town. The local newspaper a week ago filed for bankruptcy. 
This would end a continuous publication, for 93 years, of the Wrangell 
Sentinel, the longest continually published newspaper in our State. The 
paper is only the latest victim of the revenue loss caused for all 
businesses when the sawmill closed, costing more than 200 jobs in the 
community.
  Besides the newspaper, there have been jobs lost in the machine shop, 
the transportation company, the markets, even the fixture of the 
community bar, the Stikine Bar. The unthinkable has happened. The bar 
is shut down, putting 12 people out of work.
  This is the real result of the shortsighted Forest Service policies. 
These are not policies that will help the environment. According to the 
Forest Service draft of a revised Tongass Land Management Plan in 1993, 
enough timber could have been cut in southeast to keep all these people 
working with little effect, if any, on the environment. We are only 
seeking to harvest just 10 percent of the Tongass over a 100-year 
regrowth cycle, while nearly half the forest old growth is fully 
protected. Alaskans are seeking just to log 1.7 million acres of that 
forest--while nearly 7 million acres are fully protected in wilderness 
or other restricted areas.
  We are currently working on a temporary fix that may help Wrangell 
and other southeast towns that depend on timber to have a hope of a 
brighter future. Hopefully, Congress will approve the fix and I pray 
that the President will sign it in the Interior appropriations bill 
later this week.
  It will present a hope during the holidays for the thousands whose 
future depends on some level of logging in southeastern Alaska in the 
Tongass.
  But the real solution, if residents of southeastern Alaska are to 
dream of brighter days ahead, is for the Clinton administration to 
begin to think about the real pain they are causing real people in my 
State and to permit a rational, environmentally sound logging policy to 
resume in the Tongass National Forest. Logging is a renewable resource 
if properly managed. I remind the Forest Service that they said this 
set of circumstances would never happen; they would be able to maintain 
a modest supply of timber to allow the industry to sustain itself. That 
has not happened.
  If the Forest Service insists on stealing the Christmas of the people 
in Wrangell, and other towns in 1995, then in 1996 a bill that I have 
been working on all year with Senator Stevens and Representative Young 
to honor the terms of the 1990 compromise over logging in the Tongass 
is going to be back before this body. It is a present I intend to 
deliver to Alaskans before another Christmas passes.
  Mr. President, I thank the Chair for the time allotted me. I wish the 
President a good day.

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