Senate Votes to Preserve Part of Alaska Rain Forest

The Senate voted Wednesday to restrict logging and set aside 673,000 acres as a protected area in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.

To preserve old-growth parts of the vast forest, the bill would modify two long-term logging contracts and end a $40-million annual incentive for high-level harvesting in the area.

The 99-0 vote was cast after the senators set aside an amendment to require the U.S. Forest Service to trade off mining rights in the Greens Creek area of Admiralty Island in southeastern Alaska.

That exchange, with the native-Alaskan-owned Sealaska Corp., would have given the government other mining rights and land, including the last 6,000 acres of old-growth timber on Admiralty Island.

Under an agreement worked out among senators, the secretary of agriculture will try to speed up negotiations on a voluntary land and mining-rights trade. The Senate Energy and Commerce Committee is to meet this month to determine if the rights to be traded are of comparable value.

Backers of the bill said that protection is necessary for the 16.7-million-acre forest, which is larger than West Virginia and is one of the few remaining temperate rain forests in the world.

The oldest parts are home to large populations of bald eagles and grizzly bears, and the forest contains streams that are salmon spawning grounds.

Opponents said that the changes will cost jobs in a timber-dependent economy, but they preferred the Senate version over a more restrictive bill passed by the House almost a year ago.

“This is a national forest, not a national park,” Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) said as the debate began Tuesday. “People live and work in this forest, and a good number of them--almost 3,400 people--make their living solely from cutting and processing the trees that are harvested in the Tongass.”

The Senate bill would leave 1.4 million acres, or about 8%, of the forest, available to loggers, rather than the current 1.7 million acres, about 10%.

The House bill would cancel rather than modify the government’s 50-year contracts with Alaska Pulp Co. and Louisiana Pacific-Ketchikan. Environmentalists have complained that the two companies have monopolized timber and violated labor laws.

House and Senate conferees are to work out differences between the two versions.