Lisa Murkowski: “rise today to introduce legislation that I have cosponsored for a number of years, that will remedy the problems that…”

“rise today to introduce legislation that I have cosponsored for a number of years, that will remedy the problems that have been created by this administration's decision to apply the, Inventoried, Roadless Area Conservation Rule to Alaska, especially in Southeast Alaska's Tongass National Forest, and also in the Chugach National Forest of Southcentral Alaska. I am joined today in introducing that bill by my Alaska colleague Senator Dan Sullivan. Back in 2001 the Clinton administration promulgated the Nationwide Inventoried Area Roadless Conservation Rule. Initially the rule did not cover the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, which has been the subject of congressional review and special legislation twice in the past 35 years, first in the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in 1980, which reduced the allowable timber harvest in the 16.9-million acre forest from nearly 1 billion board feet a year to a 450 million board foot harvest level, and later by the Tongass Timber Reform Act of 1990, which further reduced the allowable harvest level to 267 million board feet annually. Congress in 1980 created 5.75 million acres of wilderness by creating 14 wilderness areas in the forest, and in 1990 further reduced the lands available for timber harvesting by creating five additional wilderness areas totaling 296,000 acres and 12 Land Unit Designation 11 areas of 727,700 acres that increased the protected acreages in the Tongass to more than 6.4 million.…”