Extension of Remarks
EXTENSION OF REMARKS
Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I wish to take just a minute to address 48 extraordinary hours in my life -- (Senate - June 28, 2005)
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, this year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the U.S. Forest Service. The creation of the Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture is remembered as probably one of the most significant conservation legacies of President Theodore Roosevelt.
During President Roosevelt's tenure, there were established 5 new national parks, 51 bird reserves, 4 game reserves, 18 national monuments, and 150 national forests, including the Tongass National Forest. All told, some 230 million acres of land was set aside for the public. It is no wonder that President Roosevelt is regarded not only as the first but perhaps the greatest conservation President.
President Roosevelt shared his vision for the national forests in an address to the Society of American Foresters on March 26, 1903. Here is what he said:
First and foremost, you can never afford to forget for one moment what is the object of our forest policy. The object is not to preserve the forests because they are beautiful, although that is good in itself. Nor because they are refuges for the wild creatures of the wilderness, though that too, is good in itself. The primary object of our forest policy ..... is the making of prosperous homes. Every other consideration comes secondary. A forest that contributes nothing to the wealth, progress or safety of the country is of no interest to the Government, and should be of little interest to the forester.
He further said:
Your attention must be directed to the preservation of forests, not as an end in itself, but as a means of preserving and increasing the prosperity of the nation.
I find it somewhat ironic that during the centennial year when we celebrate the achievements of the Forest Service and the professional foresters who manage these forests, that this particular amendment is offered today. This is an amendment opposed by the Society of American Foresters. This society represents 16,000 professional foresters from across the Nation. It is opposed by the National Association of Home Builders. It is an amendment opposed by the very people who were identified as the core stakeholders of our national forests by the Roosevelt administration.
This amendment is opposed by organizations which, like President Roosevelt, believe in the wise use of our forests. It is opposed by the National Association of Counties. It is opposed by America's working men and women who belong to the labor unions that make up the Forest Products Industry National Labor Management Committee. We have the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the PACE International Union, the International Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, the United Mine Workers, the Southern Council of Industrial Workers, and the Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers.
The amendment we have before the Senate now does not comport with President Roosevelt's vision for the national forests. It is an amendment that turns our national forests, which are intended to support multiple uses, into wilderness areas. It is the falling domino in the nationwide campaign to lock up our national forests, throwing people out of work and wreaking havoc on our local economies. And most offensively, to me, it is an amendment that discriminates against just one forest--the Tongass National Forest, in the State of Alaska. It is only directed to the Tongass. It covers no other national forest in the Nation. I suggest to my colleagues in the Senate that first it is the Tongass; next it will be the forests in your home States.
Even though this amendment is cloaked in the language of fiscal responsibility, it should come as no surprise that the usual suspects are working hard for its adoption--those who seek to shut down and to prohibit any timber activity on national forest lands. It is not that they are fiscal conservatives themselves. It is because they specifically oppose logging in the Tongass. These are groups such as the Wilderness Society, the Alaska Rain Forest Campaign, the National Resources Defense Council, Friends of the Earth, Sierra Club, Earthjustice, formerly known as the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund. These are organizations that have just said no, there shall be no timber activity in the Tongass.
The Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, now known as Earthjustice, is a group that maintains an office in Juneau for the purpose of appealing and then litigating the timber sales that are presented in the Tongass.
It is no wonder the Forest Service finds it difficult to efficiently manage the timber program in the Tongass. I am told we have about 2 years of the Forest Service planned timber offerings that are either under appeal or litigation at any one time. This is four times the rate experienced by the Forest Service nationally.
It is fair to say the professional foresters, in whom President Roosevelt placed his trust, no longer manage the timber in the Tongass. I can tell you these professional foresters are very frustrated that what we have are trial lawyers and judges who have more to say about managing our forests than they do.
The proponents of this amendment will tell you this is about making the free market system work within our national forests. As long as the litigators can tie up the timber sales, tie up the forest management in knots, this is not a free market scenario.
When Congress passed the Tongass Timber Reform Act, which caused the cancellation of long-term contracts and the closure of the pulp mills in Ketchikan and Sitka, that was not the free market. It was not the free market that eliminated thousands of timber jobs in the State of Alaska. It was about timber politics, plain and simple.
It is not the free market that generates the high costs that the proponents of this amendment complain make the timber sales unprofitable. According to the Society of American Foresters, about 75 percent of the cost associated with timber sales in the Tongass is spent on environmental review, appeals, and litigation. So the remaining 25 percent of that is spent on actual preparation and administration of the sale.
So again, you look at the numbers, and you say, it seems, looking at just the columns, the numbers are higher. But keep in mind, 75 percent of those costs are directly associated with the environmental review, appeals and litigation. So we need to be very clear about what this amendment does. If it is passed, it essentially will enact a roadless rule on the Tongass National Forest. Because the Tongass is currently 95 percent roadless, and because it has stringent environmental standards, the amount of timber that could be harvested from the Tongass would be vastly reduced.
The current 150 million board foot program--and keep in mind, this was formulated after a very extensive scientific consultation, with public participation. It was a process which took 9 years and $13 million to complete this plan. Under this program that again was formulated in this very lengthy process, it would be reduced to 30 to 40 million board feet. This would result in the direct loss of two or more of the mills and loss of about 680 potential jobs.
Now, some of you may be saying: Well, 680 jobs does not seem that significant. In the southeastern part of the State of Alaska, where our population numbers are few and our unemployment numbers are very high, this is a huge loss. This is a devastating loss. This would truly be nothing more than the latest chapter in the campaign to shut down the Tongass and kill off the timber industry in southeast Alaska.
Now the proponents of this amendment would have us believe that if this amendment fails, then somehow or other there are going to be all these big corporations that stand to gain. But the timber industry in southeast Alaska is not made up of big corporations. It is made up of mom-and-pop businesses. These are owner-operated small businesses run by people such as Steve Seeley, out of Ketchikan; Kirk Dahlstrom, out of Klawock; Butch and Jackie DuRette. These are real people who are contributing to their local economy. These are people who could have cut and run when the timber industry turned sour, but instead they accepted the risk. They stayed around, and they tried to build their businesses. Believe me, these are people who know what the free market is. I know these people, and I am proud to tell you of the good job they do contributing to the economy of southeast Alaska.
So for the good of southeast Alaska, and for the good of sound forest management, I ask my colleagues to look at this amendment, look at it very carefully, look at who it is opposed by. It is opposed by the Nation's professional foresters. It is opposed by working men and women. It is opposed by the National Association of Counties. And it is opposed by our Nation's homebuilders. Let's look carefully at how we manage our forests and make sure we do it right.
One of the contentions you will hear is that the economics in the Tongass do not work. You will hear some numbers thrown around. I think it is important to recognize you would be operating off of a false assumption or a false premise if you were saying that the Forest Service is supposed to be a profit-making venture. As I indicated in those comments made by President Roosevelt some 100 years ago, conservation, in Roosevelt's mind, meant the wise use of forest resources for the greatest good, not necessarily locking them up under glass down in southeastern Alaska.
The question of why the Forest Service does not necessarily make a profit has been studied extensively. There is a think tank in Bozeman, MT, called the Property and Environment Research Center. They did a study in 1995 where they noted that the Forest Service is not expected by its governing law to make a profit. Its operations are governed by extensive environmental review processes that make it difficult to turn a profit.
Again, look at the numbers. Look at what the task, the mission, is in terms of multiple use, and what it is we are asking our foresters to do.
I will speak a little bit about the cost issue because there are those who will suggest this amendment is not being put forward because they are opposed to timber in the Tongass; they just think it is an unreasonable amount of money and that we are subsidizing. Well, we have a breakdown of the various regions across the country from the U.S. Forest Service that delineates the cost per acre of our respective national forests based on State. It sets forth the net acres, the gross receipts, as well as the monetary return per dollar invested.
If you look at the Tongass, we operate at about $6.05 in terms of cost per acre. As you go through this report across the country, you realize that $6.05 is actually a pretty good deal in terms of how we are operating on a cost-per-acre basis.
Running down through the States--not singling out any particular State, but in several of the California national forests, the cost per acre at Six Rivers National Forest is $27.35. The cost per acre in Plumas, CA, is $35.86; in San Bernardino National Forest, it is $189.20. As to the sponsor of the amendment, if you look at the White Mountain National Forest in the New Hampshire area, their cost per acre is $19.39.
So if we are talking about singling out one national forest in the entire national forest system, and we are saying it is too expensive in the Tongass, and we are not going to allow for any Federal dollars to go toward building roads because we think it is too expensive there, I challenge you: Take a look at what is happening with the operation of our other national forests in terms of our cost per acre and what it means.
Let's look to the monetary return per dollar invested in those national forests in California I made reference to. Their return per dollar invested is 1 percent. That is not a very good return if that is what you are going to base it on.
So again, to single out the Tongass, to single out the State of Alaska and say, ``You are the only one where we, as a Congress, are going to decide how you are going to manage your forests because we are going to tell you that there are no dollars that can go for road-building activity,'' the land management plan that we have spent 9 years and $13 million on is thrown out the window because the Federal Government is going to tell us that our costs are a little bit too high--it is wrong. It is flat out wrong, and it needs to be stopped.
I mentioned those who oppose this amendment. It is important for us to recognize who the professional managers are, the professional foresters, some 16,000 professional foresters across the Nation who oppose this amendment. Our decision, should we adopt the Sununu amendment, would override the judgment of professional foresters. It would render meaningless the Tongass land management plan. We need to think about what it is we are doing should we move forward in support of this amendment.
I want to leave my colleagues with a few facts again about singling out the Tongass for this action in this amendment.
Alaska is a State. We are not a colony. We may have come late into the statehood battle, but we are still a State, and we deserve to be treated as a State. We sought statehood so we could gain control of our resources. But sometimes that goal remains pretty illusive. All we are asking for is that we have the ability to manage our Federal lands responsibly. We can--in conjunction with those professionals, those foresters who are working hard on this plan to make it work--manage the forests to provide for the multiple uses our national forests are tasked to do.
I know people think: Oh, we throw around these Alaska statistics all the time. But I think it is significant in this debate to put this in context. Ninety-four percent of the land in the southeastern part of the State is part of the Tongass National Forest. It is controlled by the Federal Government, the U.S. Forest Service.
In the State of Alaska, we have 54 percent of the Nation's designated wilderness. In one State, our State, we have 54 percent of the entire designated wilderness.
What are we doing with the Tongass National Forest now? Forty percent of that land in the Tongass, some 6.6 million acres, is already off limits to timber development. It is in a wilderness area. It is a national monument. It is a land-use designation II area. It is absolutely, positively off limits. That is 40 percent currently in the Tongass.
Another 56 percent of the Tongass National Forest is off limits to timber under the forest plan--this forest plan that I keep talking about that took 9 years and $13 million that this amendment will essentially kick aside. Fifty-six percent of the Tongass is off limits under that plan.
That leaves 4 percent of the Tongass, or approximately 655,000 acres, out of a total of 17.8 million acres in the Tongass. That 4 percent is what we are talking about that would be available for timber development. Allowing southeast Alaska, allowing people such as Steve Seeley and his sawmill, and Kirk Dahlstrom's sawmill in Klawock, allowing this development in an economy that is already very hard pressed, is not going to spoil the beauty of this incredible national forest--these 17.8 million acres. It is not going to doom any national treasures.
We have a plan we have worked hard to complete. We ask to be allowed to continue that, and to be able to provide for the few jobs we would like to continue in the area for the benefit of those who choose to call it home.
With that, Mr. President, I see the senior Senator from Alaska is here. As well, we are joined by our colleague from Oregon. I yield the floor.
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