Political Quotes

“I rise to oppose the Chabot-Andrews roadless amendment. Thirteen million acres of the Tongass is off limits to roads; 13 million acres. And 330,000 acres are available to forest repractices, and now we are trying to lock that up. I hear all of the talk about hunters support this. I do not know how many Members hunt, but my hunters hunt where people timber. Old growth forests do not have a lot of wildlife because there is no food there. This amendment is simply an effort by extreme environmental groups to impose their will over the objections of Alaskans. The Alaskan delegation, including the former Democratic Governor, Tony Knowles, is opposed to this lockup of the Tongass National Forest. The State of Alaska does not support blanket roadless area designations. In fact, the State took the Clinton administration to court over the issue and won. The environmentalists lost in court, and now they are trying to get Congress to do it for them. The National Forest Management Act already outlines a process for the Forest Service to make decisions on whether to build a road. The Tongass Forest Management Plan process was locally driven, based on site-specific conditions such as wildlife risk, insects and disease outbreaks, wildlife habitat, and threatened and endangered species. This amendment ignores this process, ignores local input, science, and the experience of highly competent forest managers.”