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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 29, 1997 ELEMENT IN FIXING PROPOSED FOREST PLAN The Alaska Forest Association announced today that a new Tongass report unveiled by the Government Accounting Office (GAO) correctly identifies important flaws in the process used by the Forest Service to develop the latest proposed revision of the Tongass Land Management Plan ( TLMP ). "This is a valuable report because it clearly shows that there was a period of two years during which the Forest Supervisors were not in charge of the planning process like the law says they must be," executive director Jack Phelps said. "The Forest Service failed to control the process so that it complies with all of the relevant laws governing how the forest plan for the Tongass National Forest has to be developed. The GAO also said the Forest Service has not been held accountable to bring the planning process to an end." Phelps was in Washington, D.C. for a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee where the GAO released two studies of the Forest Service planning process, one of which specifically studied the work done on the TLMP revision. "After spending 10 years and $13 million, the Forest Service is no closer to having a credible and legal plan than it was in 1987," Phelps said. "The current revision is flawed beyond repair, and the people and communities of Southeast Alaska are being set up to suffer the consequences. The government has a duty to consider the needs of all those who depend upon the forest, not just those who want to lock the forest up in a nature-lover’s playground." "There is a solution, however," Phelps said. "The GAO suggested to Senator Murkowski today that the Forest Service should acknowledge the obvious implications of its own conclusion regarding the lack of scientific data on wildlife viability, and issue a plan containing an adequate timber supply and that has substantial monitoring components in it. Then adjustments can be made to the plan after a few years of scientific data gathering. This makes good sense and would be much better public policy than what is represented in the latest round of Forest Service activities. One advantage of this approach is that the decision document produced in 1993 but never signed would be a legal and acceptable option."
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