REP ANDREWS FIGHTS LOGGING PLAN IN TONGASS NATIONAL FOREST

I have sent a letter to U.S. Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth asking him to revise a wasteful and inappropriate plan to open up the Tongass National Forest in Alaska to logging interests.  This plan was developed by the Forest Service using faulty and misleading data, and should be revised to reflect true environmental and economic realities.

Last year, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Forest Service misled the public during the development of the Tongass logging plan, because it allowed significantly more logging than was necessary.  Recreation and tourism will continue to be of more economic importance to the region than logging, now and in the future, so this plan was actually harmful to the region’s economy, rather than helpful. 

Taxpayers have paid the highest cost for this incompetence.  The GAO found that since 1982, taxpayers have paid an estimated $1 billion for logging and timber industry-related activities in Southeast Alaska.  The Forest Service itself has found that 90-95% of Tongass timber sales are unprofitable: the Tongass timber program has lost about $40 million each year since 1982.  Taxpayer dollars are literally being flushed down the toilet.

I will continue to fight the Forest Service’s logging plan for Tongass National Forest.  Logging in this protected forest is wrong environmentally and economically for the region and our country. 

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