Testimony of Jack E. Phelps, Executive Director
Offered to the Alaska Board of Forestry
January 21, 1997

The Alaska Forest Association has closely observed the work of the Science and Technical Committee formed last year to examine allegations set forth in the report from the Department of Fish and Game, Habitat Division regarding the state’s Forest Resources and Practices Act. Among other claims, the report stated that ADF&G staff are uniformly of the belief that the implementation of the FPA remains seriously deficient. The Science & Technical Committee was formed to investigate those allegations and to determine the extent to which the aforementioned belief could be substantiated by facts.

In short, the question was whether substantial harm was being done to fish and wildlife habitat as a direct result of timber harvests, particularly on private land. A closely related question which was not directly raised by the report but that begged an answer in the process, was whether any reduction in theoretical carrying capacity of any habitat was disproportionate to the benefit derived by the private landowners from managing their timber resources for their shareholders. This question is raised by the fairness doctrine and the no big hit doctrine of the Alaska Forest Resources and Practices Act.

Simply put, these doctrines declare that a balance must be struck between the values at stake when private land interests come in contact with public resource interests, in this case fisheries. The fairness doctrine insists that there be shared risks and incentives for both timber owners and the public, represented by the regulatory agencies. The no big hit doctrine requires that private landowners should not carry an inordinate economic burden for minimal losses to fish habitat. The law envisions a balance of interests between forestry and fisheries when it comes to timber harvests on private land.

After a year of meetings and careful examination of the evidence, the Science & Technical Committee’s work suggests that the existing law protecting fish habitat is working very well. Many of the issues discussed by the committee had to do with technical definitions and minutia, not evidence of actual harm. The deliberations tended to verify that logging is having a very minor impact on fish habitat. Timber harvest on private lands, at the rate and under the regulatory conditions that now exist, is taking place without significant harm to Alaska’s important fisheries resources.

To those of us in the industry who have worked to comply with the Forest Resources and Practices Act, and have made a sizable investment in fish habitat research over the past several years, this comes as no surprise. It is compatible with the tentative findings of our own ongoing scientific studies and of the research being done by others. A recent paper published in the journal of the American Fisheries Society shows that fewer than 5 percent of the anadromous fish spawning aggregates in Southeast Alaska are in decline and some of those are in unlogged areas. Private landowners have willingly left millions of dollars worth of trees in riparian buffers over the past half decade, and those contributions are augmenting the health of Alaska’s fisheries.

AFA commends the participants in the Science and Technical Committee for ensuring that the process of addressing the Habitat Division’s report was conducted in a professional and scientific manner. On balance, the leadership of the committee was fair and diligent. Various participating parties were consistently given a fair hearing, and the committee was able to arrive at a satisfactory level of consensus. The Science and Technical Committee has done a good job of identifying and clarifying technical problems with monitoring and enforcement of the Act, and most of the recommended changes have the industry’s support.

It was a good process, but it was an expensive one. It was costly for the state, and it was costly for industry. AFA member companies, one in particular, invested more than $100,000 over the past year to enable professional and research staff to attend the meetings and study the ADF&G allegations. On the state side, the process demanded huge blocks of time from Division of Forestry and Department of Fish and Game personnel, taking staff away from field work. This is unfortunate and ironic, given the frequently stated complaint from Fish and Game that they lack the financial resources to do adequate field work.

The Alaska Forest Association is committed to supporting reasonable enforcement procedures for the Forest Resources and Practices Act. Industry has shown its willingness to work through the process, even at great expense, to ensure that other resources are not harmed by harvest activities. We hope that the exercise forced upon industry, the Board of Forestry and the other agencies last year by ADF&G’s approach will not be repeated in the future. If one agency or another has questions or wishes to raise concerns about scientific or technical issues, those issues should be raised using established interagency procedures, and the discussion should take place in the context of scientific investigation before unnecessary alarm bells are rung with the press and the general public.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify on this important matter.