[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 24 (Thursday, February 14, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S775-S776]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Ms. MURKOWSKI (for herself and Mr. Begich):
  S. 340. A bill to provide for the settlement of certain claims under 
the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, and for other purposes; to the 
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I rise today for the fourth time to 
introduce or reintroduce legislation to settle the outstanding land 
claims of the Tlingit and Haida Native people, the first people of 
Southeast Alaska. I first introduced this legislation to speed up the 
conveyance of lands to the Sealaska Native Regional Corporation in 
2008. Native residents of Southeast Alaska in 1971 were promised lands 
to settle their aboriginal land claims to all of Southeast Alaska. 
Under the motto that nothing of worth comes easy, I hope that the 
compromise bill I introduce today with my colleague from Alaska Senator 
Begich will finally settle those claims early in the 113th Congress, 
capping nearly six years of congressional negotiation and review on 
this issue.
  The newly revised bill establishes where and how Sealaska may select 
the remaining 70,075 acres of land the Bureau of Land Management now 
says it is entitled to receive under the Alaska Native Claims 
Settlement Act of 1971, ANCSA. In all, Sealaska, the regional 
corporation representing some 20,000 Alaska Natives, more than a fifth 
of all Native residents in Alaska, will receive about 68,400 acres of 
land for timber development, about 1,099 acres for other economic 
development such as hydroelectric generation, marine hydrokinetic 
activity and future tourism development near Yakutat, Kake and 
Hydaburg, and 490 acres that Sealaska can apply for to gain an 
additional 76 cemetery and historical places.
  The bill provides a balance of old-growth and second-growth timber, 
allowing Sealaska's timber business to transition to second-growth 
harvesting. To address local concerns, the new bill does not contain 
some 26,000 acres of selections on northern Prince of Wales Island. 
This version of the bill also eliminates more lands near Kassa Inlet 
and Mabel Bay near Keete on Prince of Wales Island to meet wildlife 
concerns, buffer key fisheries and anchorage areas for fishermen, and 
revises selection areas to address the Forest Service's desire to 
retain more lands that will aid its young-growth timber transition 
strategy in the Tongass National Forest.
  Frankly, it has taken years of frustrating talks and negotiations to 
reach this point. This bill contains more than 175 changes since the 
2008 version, all designed to make the bill acceptable to all 
Americans. While the odds are that it still won't make absolutely 
everyone happy, the bill does address all of the major concerns voiced 
with the Sealaska bill during nearly a half dozen congressional 
hearings, 22 town hall meetings, and in hundreds of letters and media 
comments. It gives Sealaska its ANCSA selections, while it provides 
unprecedented public access to the lands Sealaska will be receiving, 
and meets the valid concerns of small communities, fishermen and timber 
workers and protects their industries while fully protecting the 
environment.
  It is a compromise. Clearly there are provisions in the bill that I 
wish were different, but on balance, it is a fair solution to a most 
difficult matter that has been dragging on for more than four decades. 
It is certainly a balanced solution that allows Sealaska to finally 
take title to the last 70,000 acres it was promised by the land claims 
settlement--lands largely to be used for economic development in a 
region where unemployment often hits 25 percent--while at the same time 
protecting more than twice as many acres for environmental and 
fisheries protection in Southeast Alaska, an area roughly the size of 
South Carolina. The bill does the latter by creating 152,000 acres of 
new conservation habitat areas in the region in eight tracts.
  The revised bill also requires Sealaska, by a conservation easement, 
to protect three major salmon spawning systems on lands it is gaining 
by imposing a 100-foot no-cut buffer, specifically, along the main stem 
of Trout Creek on Koscuisko Island, along Old Tom Creek at Polk Inlet 
and along Karheen and Tuxekan Creeks on Tuxekan Island. The State 
Forest Practices Act and buffer rules will govern the management of all 
other streams on state lands inside the new Sealaska selections.
  The bill continues and strengthens all public access provisions 
contained in ANCSA. The bill contains a provision that guarantees 
public access to Sealaska's economic land selections for recreation, 
hunting and fishing both sport and subsistence, allowing closures only 
to protect public safety, to safeguard cultural properties, to promote 
educational efforts or to protect against environmental damage, while 
allowing the public to legally challenge any such closures. It also 
protects the rights of existing guides and tour operators to continue 
operations automatically on Sealaska lands for portions of two permit 
terms, or up to 20 years.
  The revised bill also reduces the size of selection areas on 
Koscuisko and Tuxekan Islands to meet local community concerns, to 
protect, subsurface, karst formations, to protect old-growth habitat 
areas for sensitive species, and to protect anchorages for fishermen. 
The revised bill rearranges selection areas at 12 Mile Arm and Polk 
Inlet to protect Forest Service planning, facilities and research 
facilities, and increases the size of selection areas at Calder and the 
Cleveland Peninsula to offset the acreage reductions.
  Sealaska, through this bill, will give up its existing selection 
rights to 327,000 acres of the Tongass National Forest, allowing that 
timber to return to full Forest Service planning control, and the bill 
will result in Sealaska selecting about 25,000 fewer acres of old-
growth timber, traditionally the most sought after lands in the forest 
and about 50,000 fewer acres of inventoried road less lands than might 
have happened should Sealaska have stayed inside their original 
selection boundaries, lands that were designated for selection by the 
corporation in 1976. The problem with those lands, the reason why this 
bill is so important for the public good, is that if Sealaska had to 
select from those lands it would have had to select timber lands in the 
Situk River Valley, the home to the nation's foremost steelhead stream. 
It would have had to select lands in the Craig municipal watershed, key 
fisheries habitat near Hoonah and Hydaburg and some 64,000 acres of 
Old-Growth Habitat Reserves, four times more such land than 
the corporation is taking by this bill. Those selections would have 
been bad for the commercial and sport fishing industries, for tourism, 
and for the environment. Equally important from Sealaska's viewpoint, 
44 percent of the lands it had to select from by the 1976 selection 
areas were located under water bodies, making the selection rights 
worthless.

  Sealaska may use part of its entitlement to select 76 cemetery sites 
and historical places, but to address concerns from some stakeholders, 
the bill reduces the number and acreage of cemetery sites and 
historical places that Sealaska can file to receive. Acreage available 
to Sealaska was reduced more than six fold, from 3,600 acres in the 
original 2008 bill to a maximum of 490 acres. The total number of sites 
was reduced from 206 in the original bill and all parks and wilderness 
lands were placed off limits.

[[Page S776]]

  This bill also confirms that all cemetery sites and historical places 
will have to pass the existing historical review process before they 
can be conveyed. The bill, again, prohibits the selection of cemetery 
sites and historical places inside parks and conservation system units. 
Sealaska will be required to consult with local tribes before applying 
for conveyance of any sites, and the bill prohibits the transfer of 
such sites to third parties and protects them from loss of Native 
ownership in the event of any future financial claims against 
Sealaska--the lands reverting to the Federal Government in the event of 
financial issues. The bill also requires that Sealaska provide a 25-
foot easement to allow anyone to sport fish along any salmon stream 
that crosses such new sites.
  The bill allows Sealaska to receive nine small parcels of land that 
Sealaska may use to help spur cultural tourism, ecotourism, or, in two 
cases, renewable energy development near the communities of Yakutat, 
Kake, and Hydaburg. The number of sites, totaling 1,099 acres, is 
vastly reduced, considering more than 50 sites totaling 5,000 acres had 
been considered in earlier versions of the legislation. The small 
parcels all are within or near the so-called 10 selection boxes 
established by a 1976 amendment to ANCSA. Five sites are in the Yakutat 
area, where Sealaska currently owns no land on behalf of its tribal 
member shareholders. The sites in the Yakutat area are at Crab Island, 
North Dolgoi Island, Cannon Beach, Chicago Harbor and Redfield Lake. 
Two sites are in the Kake area: Turnabout Island and East Payne Island. 
There is a hydro site at Lake Josephine on Prince of Wales I and and a 
final site for marine hydrokinetic development, ocean current energy, 
on the northern tip of Dall Island at Turn Point-Tlevak Narrows' 
revised bill removes all sites that drew concern from commercial 
fishermen, small tour operators, environmental groups or local 
communities in the Alaska Panhandle.
  The compromise bill conveys three non-exclusive access easements to 
Sealaska to use as traditional Native trade and migration routes in 
Southeast. The bill, as revised, renames the routes to honor Alaska's 
Tlingit and Haida Indians and the history of the region and provides 
generally for public access. The Yakutat to Dry Bay trail will be 
renamed ``Neix naax aan flax'' meaning, The Inside Passage; the Bay of 
Pillars to Port Camden trail will be renamed the ``Yakwdeiyl'' trail, 
meaning the Canoe Road; and the Portage Bay to Duncan Canal trail will 
be renamed ``Lingit Deiyl,'' meaning the People's Road.
  The bill requires Sealaska to share use of all forest roads with the 
Forest Service and others, meaning that the government retains the 
right to use the roads to access other timber sales, as do the public. 
The bill maintains all of the access provisions granted by ANCSA and 
includes provisions to make access rights workable for all.
  It has taken years of really listening to the requests about this 
bill and working through them one by one to find solutions, with the 
past nearly two years involved in frequent negotiations among the 
Forest Service, Democratic and Republican congressional staff, 
Sealaska, environmental groups and other interest groups such as 
commercial fishermen and timber operators. This is truly a compromise 
piece of legislation. But it finally gets Sealaska its lands, protects 
fisheries and wildlife, and helps maintain a timber industry in 
Southeast Alaska.
  This compromise, the direct result of years of negotiation, has a 
host of good points. It will prevent ``high-grading'' of timber' the 
practice where companies cut only the best timber lands, leaving lesser 
quality lands behind. Sealaska's conveyances in the nine commercial 
tracts called for in this bill: Calder, Election Creek, Cleveland 
Peninsula, 12-Mile Arm, Tuexkan Island, Polk and MacKenzie Inlets, 
Koscuisko Island, Keete, and Kuiu Island include only about 20,700 
acres of large old-growth trees just 3.8 percent of the forest's 
537,451 acres of such trees. Already 437,000 acres of large old-growth 
trees, 81 percent, are protected in conservation areas within the 19.6-
million-acre national forest.
  The bill likely will save the government money. In additional to 
making Sealaska give up some $2 million of escrowed funds, the bill 
means Sealaska, by getting about 25,000 acres of less valuable second-
growth, based on current timber prices, could be foregoing more than 
$10 million of timber value, compared to if it had received all old-
growth trees--old-growth providing the most valuable habitat for 
species in the forest like Sitka black-tailed deer, the Queen Charlotte 
goshawk and wolves.
  For Alaskans, the bill makes sure that more than 99 percent of the 
lands Sealaska will be receiving are open for public access. That is 
the opposite of what could happen if this bill does not pass, as then 
Sealaska would be free to prevent the public from trespassing across 
their new lands, like all other private land owners can post their 
properties.
  The changes between this version and previous versions of the measure 
are far too many to list here. But briefly this bill reduces the number 
and acreage of small parcels for economic diversification, once called 
``Future'' sites. It reduces the number of new Native cemetery and 
historical places that Sealaska could select, allowing only such sites 
outside national parks or wilderness to be selected. The bill increases 
public access provisions, prevents Sealaska from gaining potential 
federal grants for management of the cemetery sites, removes a host of 
questionable land selections on environmental grounds and revises 
timber lands to protect subsistence hunting areas and resource 
gathering spots.
  As I say, I introduce this bill in a bipartisan manner with my Alaska 
colleague, Senator Mark Begich again as a co-sponsor. It is a 
reasonable bill and I hope it finally can pass both bodies of Congress, 
it passing the House of Representatives in a somewhat different form in 
2012 and become law. Southeast Alaska's Natives, which while the 
largest group of Natives in Alaska in 1971, received the third smallest 
land entitlement in the claims act 42 years ago. That was mostly 
because much of the rest of the forest at the time was already 
dedicated to long-term timber sale contracts. Now that those contracts 
have been voided, it is only just and equitable that Alaska's first 
inhabitants get a chance to select a little more of the land first 
settled by their ancestors.
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