Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, rise today to introduce legislation
that I have cosponsored for a number of years, that will remedy the
problems that have been created by this administration's decision to
apply the, Inventoried, Roadless Area Conservation Rule to Alaska,
especially in Southeast Alaska's Tongass National Forest, and also in
the Chugach National Forest of Southcentral Alaska. I am joined today
in introducing that bill by my Alaska colleague Senator Dan Sullivan.

Back in 2001 the Clinton administration promulgated the Nationwide
Inventoried Area Roadless Conservation Rule. Initially the rule did not
cover the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, which has been the subject
of congressional review and special legislation twice in the past 35
years, first in the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in
1980, which reduced the allowable timber harvest in
the 16.9-million acre forest from nearly 1 billion board feet a year to
a 450 million board foot harvest level, and later by the Tongass Timber
Reform Act of 1990, which further reduced the allowable harvest level
to 267 million board feet annually. Congress in 1980 created 5.75
million acres of wilderness by creating 14 wilderness areas in the
forest, and in 1990 further reduced the lands available for timber
harvesting by creating five additional wilderness areas totaling
296,000 acres and 12 Land Unit Designation 11 areas of 727,700 acres
that increased the protected acreages in the Tongass to more than 6.4
million. With the passage of the Sealaska lands bill in 2014, total
protected acreage in the Tongass has risen to 6.55 million acres.

Lands classified for potential timber production have been
drastically reduced since the 1980 Act's passage. In the Tongass Land
Management Plans, TLPM, crafted after ANILCA's passage, 13.3 million
acres of the forest, nearly 80 percent, have been restricted from
resource development. Of the 9.5 million acres of commercial timber
lands in the Tongass only 3.4 million were open for development after
1980 and only 800,000, including previously logged areas, were
permitted/planned for harvest over a prospective 100-year timber
rotation, harvesting limited to about 8,250 acres a year--4 percent of
the total land area. That included about 400,000 ``new'' acres of new
timber lands over a century on top of the roughly 425,000 acres
harvested since modern timber activities in Southeast Alaska began in
the 1950's and allowed in part for reentry in the future. Since passage
of the Tongass Timber Reform Act, and since imposition of the
Inventoried Roadless Rule, potential harvesting has dropped even
further.

The 2001 Inventoried Roadless Areas in the Tongass include 9.5
million acres, 57 percent of the entire forest, while 5.4 million
acres, 99 percent, of the Chugach National Forest in Southcentral
Alaska were placed in protected status. In the Tongass 7.4 million
acres are in the highest protected status of inventoried roadless
meaning that not only can't roads be built for forestry, but that
access is not allowed for other uses such as renewable energy
development. Overall, between the Inventoried Roadless Rule and other
land protections, fewer than 176,000 acres of ``new'' timber lands are
planned for harvest over the next 100 years, cutting the allowable sale
quantity below 267 mmbf. The drop in employment in the region has been
chilling. According to the Forest Service, total direct timber sector
employment fell from a high of 3,543 average annual employees in 1990
to 402 in 2007, Tongass employment in logging and sawmilling has
declined from 409 in 2001, the first year of the roadless rule, to 114
by 2007. The drop off in timber activity would actually be higher
except the State of Alaska, to the degree that it could, increased
State timber sales. In 2002, for example, 73 percent of all timber cut
in Southeast came from Federal forest lands, while by 2007 the
percentage stood at barely half coming from Federal lands.

Without changes in the roadless rule to allow some additional timber
harvest areas and other energy and mineral development, no more than
about 3 percent of the Nation's largest forest will ever be developed
and Southeast Alaska will be forced to depend solely on fisheries and
tourism as economic engines, potentially returning the region to its
impoverished economy of the 1940s.

Today I am introducing legislation to simply exempt Alaska from the
Inventoried Roadless Rule. That will not permit economic development on
all 9.5 million acres of IRA lands in the Tongass or many of the lands
in the Chugach. They will continue to be protected by the terms of the
national forest plans for both forests. What it will do is permit land
planners the flexibility to propose more rational land planning
decisions in the future. It would allow the Forest Service the ability
to permit road and electric transmission lines to be placed to tap the
region's huge hydroelectric potential--there being 300 megawatts of
hydropower available from known sites, if distribution lines can be
built at reasonable cost to get the power to markets.

Adding some timber back to the timber base would allow a timber
industry to again help the region's economy. But that would not harm
the environment and wildlife. Already of the 537,451 acres of
productive old-growth, POG, trees left in the Tongass, 437,000 are in
permanent conservation areas--81 percent.

The roadless rule may make sense in the contiguous states since there
are at least some roads and utility lines that cross those States'
national forests. In Southeast Alaska, however, there is no
transportation network except a marine ferry system, and no permitted
electrical transmission system. It simply made no sense in 2001 for the
Inventoried Roadless Rules to apply to Alaska. The rule is not needed
since by existing plans and regulations, even without IRA's, 96 percent
of the Tongass will remain protected. An exemption from the rule will
simply allow Alaskans an opportunity to make thoughtful decisions on
development in a region 18 times larger than the state of Delaware, but
with 1,300 miles of road in the entire region, 1/10 of the road miles
of tiny Delaware.

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