[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 60 (Thursday, April 23, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Page S2398]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        TRIBUTE TO FORREST COLE

 Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I call the Senate's attention to 
the forthcoming retirement of U.S. Forest Service official Forrest 
Cole, who for the past 12 years has served as the supervisor of the 
Nation's largest National Forest, and probably unfortunately its most 
controversial one, the 16.9-million acre Tongass National Forest in 
southeast Alaska.
  Mr. Cole, a four-decade employee of the U.S. Forest Service, began 
his career, following receipt of a bachelor of science degree in 
forestry from Northern Arizona University, working on fire-related jobs 
in Arizona forests. In 1979 he began what he thought at the time would 
be a 2-year posting working in the Tongass forest in southeast Alaska, 
a forest that covers an area just slightly larger than the State of 
West Virginia. The Coles, however, found the beauty, wildlife, and 
resources of southeast Alaska too attractive to leave, and the family 
stayed. Over the past 36 years, Mr. Cole has served as the presale 
forester and small sales forester on the Petersburg Ranger District in 
the central Tongass; as timber management assistant on the Juneau/
Yakutat Ranger Districts in the northern Tongass; as the timber 
minerals, special uses management assistant on the Juneau Ranger 
District; as the timber and fire management staff officer and resources 
staff officer on the Stikine administrative area, and later as the 
Forest and Fire Management staff officer for the entire Tongass 
National Forest based in the southern Tongass in Ketchikan.
  Mr. Cole also served in the regional office as director of forest 
management, and as part of the planning team for the Tongass land 
management plan, with responsibility for the timber, vegetation, and 
subsistence programs in all of southeast Alaska--the land plan being 
the key document that guides all activities in the forest. In 2003 he 
was named as the forest supervisor for the Tongass, a key supervisory 
post, second only to the Regional Forester.
  Mr. Cole during his years in Alaska has been in the midst of many 
controversial issues such as of how much timber should be allowed for 
harvest; how to protect wolves and goshawks, bald eagles, salmon and 
bear while harvesting timber; and how to provide the recreation that 
Americans increasingly demand. Mr. Cole arrived in Alaska the year 
before Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation 
Act, ANILCA, that cut the allowable timber harvest in the Tongass by 
several hundred percent, from 1.35 billion board feet a year--a level 
that was considered its biological, sustainable yield level when modern 
timber harvesting began in the 1950s--to 450 million board feet that 
mandated by Congress in 1980. A decade later he was involved in 
implementing the next Tongass timber ``reform'' bill that once again 
nearly cut the forest's allowable timber forest in half, creating 
another six areas of wilderness, and designating another 12 new areas 
as congressionally protected lands, bringing to 6.48 million acres the 
amount of the Tongass protected from development.
  As forest supervisor, Mr. Cole was required to implement the national 
Inventoried Roadless Area rule last decade that took another 9.5 
million acres of the Tongass out of the timber base. And just this 
year, with passage last December of the Sealaska Native Corporation 
final land conveyance act, Mr. Cole has started the process of revising 
what lands will remain in the region's slimming federal timber base. He 
has had to wrestle with how to guide the timber industry's survival 
given that only 1.8 percent of the Tongass is still ``open'' to the 
harvesting of older-growth trees--80 percent of them having been 
permanently protected, and how to manage guiding, recreation, tourism, 
utility and infrastructure access and development in a forest that 
stretches 500 miles from near Ketchikan to Yakutat.
  More than any other individual Mr. Cole has been a referee between 
many forces. And I know it can't have been a pleasant experience 
implementing policy set by Congress and the executive branch, more than 
3,000 miles away. It has been a hard, often thankless job managing the 
Tongass. I wish to publicly thank Mr. Cole for his tireless service to 
America in doing that job well. We have not always agreed, but I truly 
appreciate that he has labored long and hard to be fair. He has 
listened to all sides. Given the legal, political and budgetary 
mandates he has faced, he deserves all of our thanks for all of the 
difficult phone calls he has returned, all of the complaints he has 
patiently fielded, and for all of the tough decisions he has been 
forced to make. It is no wonder that Mr. Cole was the recipient of the 
2008 Regional Forester Award. He deserves the gratitude of the entire 
Senate for doing his best to meet all of the competing demands 
Americans make of our national forests. And I personally thank him for 
his contributions and commitment to public land stewardship, community 
stability and for keeping the public's trust in one of America's most 
hotly contested regions. I think it demonstrates his love and concern 
for Alaska and the Tongass that he and his family are choosing to 
retire in Petersburg, AK. I wish him and his family well.

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