There are many different ways in which you can contribute your voice to pertinent conservation issues. 

March  2010

TAKE ACTION!  Let our Alaska senators know how privatizing public lands near Sitka will affect your quality of life; and subsistence, recreational, and business activities.

Attend the Sitka Town Meeting on Friday, March 12 at Harrigan Centennial Hall.  Please plan on attending, even if you don't wish to testify.  It is important to show decision makers that Sitkans have concerns about this controversial bill.

Background on the SEALASKA legislation: 

The Sealaska Land Entitlement Legislation (SB 881) is moving quickly in Congress committees, and unless serious opposition is raised to the bill, it may pass by the end of this summer.   Although some changes were made since Don Young introduced the legislation in the House of Representatives 2 years ago, they are mainly superficial and the legislation is still a threat.  Letters sent to Alaskan Senators now can help to influence this legislation and may directly convince Senator Begich that this legislation is not the solution to Sealaska land issues.

What to do:  Call or write a letter to both Alaskan Senators and let them know that the current version of the Sealaska Legislation does not work for SE Alaska.

Senator Begich   

Washington DC office - (202) 224-3004

http://begich.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=EmailSenator

Senator Murkowski

Washington DC office (202) 224-6665

Alaska office - 1 (877) 829-6030

Write to Senator Murkowski here: http://murkowski.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=EMailLisa

Senator Jeff Bingaman (NM) chairman of Senate Natural Resources Committee

DC (202) 224 5521

http://bingaman.senate.gov/contact/types/email-issue.cfm

What should be mentioned

• This Sealaska Legislation may cause a great deal of conflict within Southeast Alaska and may create conflict within communities, between Native Corporations and local tribes, between municipal governments and Sealaska, and cause a shareholder/ non shareholder conflict
  
• Senate hearings should be held in Southeast Alaska in order to address the concerns of residents

• Sealaska has selected highly valuable land.  The value of this land far exceeds the value of the acres that they were designated for selection within their ANCSA withdrawal areas

• Sealaska's Native Future's sites may displace current businesses and opportunities on public land and will harm some community's uses of the forest

• The current version of Sealaska Legislation may hinder the possibility of dealing with larger Tongass Conflict issues

• Sealaska legislation will allow Sealaska to manage sensitive clan sacred  sites and potentially develop them as tourist attractions. The sites near Sitka, are currently managed by the Sitka Tribe of Alaska in a government-to-government relationship and Sealaska as a private owner of these sites would weaken the Sitka tribe

• There is not enough clarity on how Sealaska will work together with tribes and communities so that land selections in the different land usage types will truly benefit communities, tribal members, and shareholders

• Sealaska might log up to 80,000 acres on Prince of Wales Island primarily for export markets, removing some of the best old growth forests and affecting the viability of important subsistence resources and endemic genetic species lineages

• Globally significant karst caves and landforms would no longer receive federal protection

Despite the majesty of the Tongass, the U.S. Forest Service is still allowing the logging industry to chop away at America's pride. For over 50 years, private logging companies have had access to the biggest and best trees in our country's largest public forest and have left leaving Americans to foot the bill. Since 1982, American taxpayers have spent $1 billion subsidizing the timber industry's clearcutting of America's Rainforest in Alaska. 

Over the past twenty-five years, U.S. taxpayers have lost an average of $40 million each year building roads and clearcutting the Tongass National Forest. The Forest Services proposed logging plan includes projects which will continue to cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars each year. According to the Forest Service, in 2005 it spent more than $48 million to plan and administer timber sales and to build logging roads on the Tongass, yet the agency received less than $600,000 in timber sale receipts.

Despite these huge taxpayer subsidies, the large-scale timber industry in Southeast Alaska has significantly declined due to increased competition and decreased demand in world timber markets. In addition fewer than 200 jobs are generated by the Tongass National Forest's logging program according to the Forest Service. Consequently, the taxpayer subsidy per Tongass timber job is over $200,000. In comparison, the commercial fishing fleet in southeast Alaska employs nearly 4,000 people and an estimated 5,900 people work in the tourism industry.

While the Forest Service is subsidizing a struggling industry, which contributes less and less to Southeast Alaska's economy, it is vastly under-funding projects that would support other growing sectors of Southeast Alaska's economy. Industries such as recreation, tourism, commercial fishing, sport fishing, and hunting are significant contributors to the regional economy. If Congress is serious about cutting government waste, the annual subsidy to boost up the timber industry and clearcut the rainforest in Alaska is a good place to start.

Led by Representatives Robert Andrews (D-NJ) and Steve Chabot (R-OH), the U.S. House of Representatives has twice voted overwhelmingly in favor of ending taxpayer subsidies for logging roads in the Tongass National Forest. The amendment is making a difference on the ground in southeast Alaska. Since first passing the House, the road budget for the Tongass has steadily declined. But there is still work to be done!

Representatives Andrews and Chabot will offer the Tongass Subsidy Amendment to the Interior Appropriations bill during House action again this spring.  A vote is expected in mid-June.

WHAT CAN YOU DO? Ask your members of Congress to support ending wasteful subsidies in the Tongass National Forest. Write your Representative today urging them to help shift federal funding away from the U.S. Forest Service's Tongass timber program.  Limited federal funding should instead be invested in the vital and growing sectors of Southeast Alaska's economy. [contacts for the Alaska delegation can be found here.]