I think that the Forest Service needs to look at how you might be able to allow for tiny slivers with minimal impact.

when people are hanging by their fingernails and they're out of, you know, fingernails.

It's the communities, the former timber communities, that I represent say this to me all the time.

I would appreciate it if you would do so quickly because as we go into the fire season if states aren't really sure where they submit their billing you would hate to think that somebody is going to hold back or defer because they're…

What I'm hearing from folks there is that the Forest Service is reducing the permit allocations in the Misty Fjords National Monument and Trader's Cove.

I'm just so concerned that within the agency, within the Forest Service we've, kind of, lost the, we lost the initial focus of the Forest Service.

I don't want us to get to the point where this term multiple use is thrown around like we talk about an all of the above energy policy or all of the above except the things that I don't want to include.

The Forest Service manages some 22 million acres of national forest lands in the Southeastern and South Central part of Alaska.

we're not going to let that happen. This is too important to the people we represent to let that happen.

We've got to be able to build these transmission lines. We've got to have some help around the road less that is strangling our opportunity economic development.

As you know the U.S. Court of Appeals trucked down the decision to exempt the Tongass from the national road less decision.

These communities are hanging on by their fingernails. I'm not sure Wrangell has any fingernails left.

I want to join you though in your commitment to working on a way forward with the Secure Rural Schools and those communities that we do represent.

It limits our ability with energy, renewable energy development, access to mineral areas.

I think the last thing that the service needs right now is more land to manage.

We have got to get the harvest up. We know we can do it in compliance with environmental rules.

It is adding insult to injury to these communities... it's an economic disaster for so many of them.

So you're saying that the reductions will be even greater in 2014.

This is something that is ongoing. We would like to think that years after the tsunami we are not going to be seeing this impact, but we know in Alaska there is still an incredible amount that is out there.

I continue to remain concerned about the environmental impact statement (EIS) National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is working on for the Arctic.

Alaska has consistently expressed their concerns with a federally driven National Ocean Policy.

I would certainly hope that Alaska would be excluded when that implementation plan comes out.

I think that this is under dispute.

I follow my colleague from Oregon, the chairman of the Energy Committee, here in discussing the qualifications of the nominee for Secretary of the Interior, Sally Jewell. We recognize as westerners that this is an appointment, this is a…

Alaskans are very supportive of making sure that we have good, reliable data.