Economic Realities in the Tongass National Forest

A New Library Bill
for
America's Largest National Forest
Up in Alaska's Tongass National Forest, communities on the island called Prince of Wales have been fighting to stop Senators Murkowski and Begich's efforts to pass S 881 from the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee where it is now held up by Senator Bingaman, a staunch backer of pro enviornment issues.
The small fishing and logging communities are joined by a broad swath of the Alaska public on all points of the political spectrum. Opposition delayed the bill from moving out of committee when on Feb 23, 2008, the leaders of 14 national environmental groups sent in a letter to Bingaman saying hold on a minute here. These included the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, Earth Justice, Audubon, Pew, and Leauge of Conservation Voters, and Green Peace.
S 881 is seen by these groups and many Alaskans as a bold land grab by Sealaska, established and funded by Congress as a for profit corporation. Sealaska and its sister corporations have clearcut over 700 square miles of old growth rain forest, largely on Prince of Wales Island.
All of this land was deeded back in 1971 to Sealaska as settlement of its claims along with tens of millions of dollars. Sealaska has cut 85 percent of its land in less than 35 years.
Here's the rub. Sealaska wants to privatize public land it was never entitled to under ANCSA in 1971. The precident this land grab in S 881 sets for the Tongass could effect fedearl land anywhere else. In Alaska there are 100 million acres of public land.
Sealaska now wants to break a 39 year old deal to log within certain areas by going outside of the bounderies where it is entitled to choose land. In addition, it wants land to which it was not entitled in over 50 beautiful bays that were never anticipated in the origianl act. And it wants a few acres at the mouths of hundreds of salmon streams.
These new lands total about 130 square miles. They are next to communities where residents invested their life savings in lodges and homes never knowing the lands around them would be yanked from the public domain into the hands of a corporation that has so ravished its own lands that the Hoonah Indian Association made a video showing how Sealaska had cut tens of miles long swaths from near mountain tops down to the sea.
Faced with an uprising of ordinary people Murkowski apparently stopped the momentum after a series of meetings in the affected communities raised substanital opposition including unanimous opposition by the affected communities.
But then a strange thing happened April 5th. The South East Alaska Conservation Council decided to enter into mediation with Sealaska and the latter agreed. Back in 1991, Seacc led efforts to reform management of the Tongass. Now it has adapted a stance of collaborating with former antagonists to reach harmonious accords in a spirit of trust. Seacc's name was conspicously absent from the Februrary 23rd letter opposing the Sealaska Bill.
In its April 5th phone conference with groups, including the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society, Seacc decided upon a place to talk that, to the ears of Califonians, echos the name Quincy Library. Yes, this time the venue of harmony will be non other than the Library at Douglas Island. The date is April 19th.
Like Quincy Library, the press will be bared at Douglas Library. Unlike Quincy Library, so will everyone else but the collaborators. The pow wow at Douglas Library will be behind closed doors. Perhaps the only way to shield the public from a process that will privatize 130 square miles of its lands is to close the doors to the press and everyone else?
Unlike Quincy which required unanimous consent by a wide swath of local participants, Douglas Library is a mediation between a corporation and Seacc. Seacc represents none of the affected communities.
The communities most affected reject becoming part of the mediation. So if a deal is brokered, the solution will be imposed upon them. For the most part, the communities see the mediation as illegitimate. Yet illegitimate offspring have aspired to the throne before. An announced deal at Douglas Library could give Murkowski all the cover she needs to say she has support in her state for this bill.
Senitment in the communities is running along these lines: "You cannot compromise with a corporation which will have the right to do anything to its lands, including cutting every tree." Not when these communities live upon the fish and wildlife the forest produces, indeed when they heat their homes with forest timber or cut it on a sustainable basis for a living. For others in the area and the country at large, an issue is why waste years of Forest Service planing and millions of dollars to do so at the whim of a corporation that thinks it is entitled to more of the public domain than the American people decided it deserved in 1971. If enacted, this bill will put many existing small scale logging operations out of work in the long term.
S 881 needs to be defeated by an outpouring of opposition from every American who recoils at our public lands being traded behind locked doors at Douglas Library.
Faxes to Sentators on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and to your Senator will kill S 881. Many folks out on Prince of Wales would be mighty happy if you did.
Alan Stein was the former Director of the Salmon Bay Protection Association which in 1990 won buffers strips for all the salmon streams on the Tongass National Forest