We have practically no livestock grazing. There is a considerable amount of wildlife in these national forest areas. There is a pattern

of land use under permit similar to that found in other national forest areas in the States, but within these national forest areas the area is predominantly Government-owned and is predominantly national forest.

We have followed a policy here which I think is of special interest to this committee in eliminating areas from national forest status for homesites and to facilitate community development. Over the past 10 years, a total of 107,372 acres have been eliminated from the two national forests for these purposes.

I should mention also a special policy in operation in Alaska is the requirement that, with certain relatively minor exceptions, logs cut from national forests be given at least primary manufacture within the Territory.

There has been a good deal of reference here in Ketchikan to the pulp mill. I think the members of this committee can take a great deal of pride from their substantial part in helping to bring about the development of the forest industry of which this pulp mill here and the plywood plant in Juneau are the initial steps in the development which we are sure will be of significance and continue on into the future. In 1953 the new modern plywood plant of Alaska Plywood Corp. was brought into production in Juneau. And in late 1954 a longestablished sawmill at Wrangell was reactivated and brought into production.

Also in 1954, the $50 million high-alpha cellulose pulp plant of Ketchikan Pulp Co. was brought into production at Ward Cove near Ketchikan. This plant is now producing at the rate of around 400 tons a day with operations stabilized and the plant working at a good level of efficiency. Ketchikan Pulp Co. is a joint venture of American Viscose Corp. and Puget Sound Pulp & Timber Co. It came into being as a result of its backers' willingness to establish a new enterprise based on a 50-year contract with the Forest Service for 1.500 million cubic feet of timber. One and one-half billion cubic feet of timber is roughly equivalent to 8,300 million board-feet of timber. This contract provides for redetermination of stumpage rates at 5-year periods.

The start of these two new industries has marked the long-awaited beginning of a new era in forest products manufacture in the Territory of Alaska.

And the march onward continues. In June of 1954 the Forest Service made a preliminary award for a 3 billion board-foot sale near Wrangell to the Pacific Northern Timber Co. of Wrangell. The sale contract, which was executed by the company last March, calls for the construction of a sawmill prior to December 31, 1957, and the construction of a pulp-manufacturing plant of at least 80 tons daily capacity prior to December 31, 1962. Members of the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee were instrumental in helping Pacifie Northern Timber Co. find a way to acquire a plant site, partly on tidelands, near Wrangell. This, too, is a 50-year sale with provision for determination of stumpage rates at 5-year periods and other features that are similar to the contract with Ketchikan Pulp Co.

A third large pulp timber sale was started on its way last August with the preliminary award of a 50-year contract for 7,500 million

board-feet to Georgia-Pacific Alaska Co. This timber-sale contract calls for the construction of a plant for the manufacture of pulp prior to July 1, 1961. This company has now posted $100,000 in cash and negotiable securities which would be forfeited in event of failure to qualify for final award and execute the contract. The company is investigating sites in the immediate vicinity of Juneau for its planned newsprint mill. The size of plant contemplated, and the rate of cut contemplated, will make this proposed Juneau operation comparable in size and amount of employment to the operation of Ketchikan Pulp Co. at Ketchikan.

Still another large pulp timber sale is now under active consideration by the Forest Service. Alaska Lumber & Pulp Co., Inc., an Alaska corporation which is a wholly owned subsidiary of a Japanese corporation, is actively interested in establishing a pulp operation at Sitka. This company has had engineers and foresters making the necessary preliminary investigations and has now developed firm plans for a high-alpha cellulose pulp operation comparable in general design and manufacturing process to that at Ketchikan. It is the Forest Service expectation that the details of this timber sale will be completed in time to permit the start of advertising this month. This sale proposal involves a 50-year contract, and a total volume of 5,250 million board-feet.

It is hard to appreciate the full significance of these recent developments in their potential impact on the economy of the Territory. The population of Ketchikan has increased by well over 4,000 people since the pulp mill came to Ketchikan. There is every reason to suppose that these other developments will have a similar effect on the population of the communities where the plants will be located. And of course that means more service industries, and tax income, and also school problems, transportation problems, public utility problems, and road problems.

Whenever the proposed Sitka sale is successfully consummated, the Forest Service in southeast Alaska will have reached the stage of needing to get several years' experience with pulp timber operations before further determinations can properly be made about the specific place for possible additional industry. We have previously talked about five major pulp installations in southeast Alaska. That may well prove to be the desirable pattern. But the caution flag must wave just now because the total volume of timber which is either committed or must be held in reserve comes fairly close to totaling the volume that can now be classed as commercially operable. These four large contracts total about 24 billion feet, for a 50-year supply. A further reserve to support existing industry for the same length of time should be not less than 6 billion feet. A 30- to 50-year supply must be held in reserve so that there will be timber to support industry at the end of this first 50-year period. It is certain that future developments in utilization and harvesting of timber will permit some increase in the rate of harvest. So will future growth on these stands after a sizable acreage has been cut over and the old growth stands are replaced by vigorously growing young stands. But it is most difficult now to make adequately supported decisions about where and in what amounts such additional industry can be placed. Consequently, we feel it is necessary that there be a period of time now when the Forest Service here, and also the forest industry here, get

some experience with operations in pulp timber stands before efforts are made to decide how much additional capacity can be supported, and where it can best be located.

I would like to depart from the prepared statement to comment there that we are engaged in an inventory project which is in its second year now and which will take another 2 to 3 years to complete, which makes use of the most recent aerial photo and statistical sampling techniques to obtain more precise information on the amount and location of timber volume than has been available in southwest Alaska before. The completion of this inventory project, which is a part of the general Forest Service effort to firm up volume estimates, will give us a good part of the further information that is necessary to be able to reach good decisions about where and how much additional industry can be supported here.

RECREATION AND LAND ACTIVITIES

Completion of the Anchorage-Seward Highway in 1953 as a fully modern surfaced highway has brought pressure for use of land on all of the Kenai Division of the Chugach National Forest in a way that has never existed before. It is commonplace for week end usage to exceed 10,000 people. In response to this very heavy pressure of recreation use, the Forest Service has been undertaking to expand existing campgrounds or build new campgrounds and to build connecting roads. Special use permits have recently been issued for the construction of two new resorts in the Kenai Lake area, and expansion onto national forest land of a third, with construction of those resorts well along. The pattern of land use and recreation development in the Kenai division has become fairly well crystallized now, and the program of the Forest Service in this area is to expand facilities and provide for meeting increased needs just as fully as possible. New summer home groups have been approved within the last year, and surveys of additional summer home groups are underway or scheduled. So are surveys for extension of additional roads in the area, to open up more of that spectacularly beautiful country for recreation use.

A parallel program on a smaller scale is being followed in the rest of the region where recreation pressure exists adjacent to the existing communities.

FOREST RESEARCH

The Research Branch of the United States Forest Service operates an Alaska Research Center at Juneau. This office is charged with responsibility for forest research on national forest lands and on other forest lands, also. Personnel assigned to this center are doing research in forest management and forest entomology, and are engaged in the Alaska portion of the nationwide forest survey. Now is an especially critical time for an adequate research program to be vigorously pushed. The start of extensive pulp timber cutting operations presents new problems and new phases of old problems. We know how to get natural reproduction under most circumstances, as an example, but we are a little less certain of the effect on soil-water-plant relations of the methods of cutting that will assure natural reproduction. Effects, if any, on stream flow and fish are of great importance in southeast Alaska.

ADMINISTRATIVE ORGANIZATION

The Alaska region of the Forest Service has a different organization pattern than do the other Forest Service regions. The two large national forests are not handled as separate administrative units. Instead, each is split into two smaller units called divisions, under the charge of a division supervisor. Division offices are located in Ketchi kan, Juneau, Cordova, and Seward. Two of the divisions are further subdivided into ranger districts. The regional headquarters is located at Juneau.

STATISTICAL SUMMARY

The timber cut during fiscal year 1954 totaled 70,283,000 board-feet, and rose to 182,484,000 board-feet during fiscal year 1955. Receipts during fiscal year 1955 amounted to only $23,045.34. However, there was deposited in the Treasury to the credit of the Tongass National Forest special fund the amount of $584,962.46. Total deposits to the Treasury showed an 80 percent increase over fiscal year 1954. The Tongass special fund was established in response to Public Law 385 of the 80th Congress, known as the Tongass Timber Act. As of September 28, 1955, the total deposits accumulated in this special Treasury account amounted to $2,011,141.96. This fund is now increasing at a rate of over half a million dollars a year, and the rate of increase will go up as these new sales come into production.

At the start of the present fiscal year there were 1,142 special use permits in effect, authorizing use of national forest land for residences, cabins, homesites, water transmission and other rights-of-way, camps, and the like on some 48,300 acres and some 300 miles. Also, there were 160 executed Department of the Interior oil leases covering some 209,300 acres, and 33 Federal Power Commission licenses covering 628 acres and 37 miles. The number of recreation visits during the most recent year for which estimates were made totaled some 370,000. Mr. BARTLETT. Does that conclude your statement?

Mr. GREELEY. Yes.

Mr. BARTLETT. Without objection, the statement will be included in the record at this point.

(The statement referred to follows:)

THE WORK OF THE UNITED STATES FOREST SERVICE IN ALASKA

In Alaska the Forest Service is responsible for two large national forests. On these 2 forests, which total just under 21 million acres in size, our action program is to manage these forest areas in accordance with the same broad principles of administering wild forest lands that have proved successful in the national forest regions in the continental United States. Keystones in the framework of policy for administering these areas are sustained yield of the resources and multiple use of the land.

The two national forests are the Chugach, which is 4,724,410 acres in size, and the Tongass, which is 16,016,666 acres in size. The Chugach National Forest is located adjacent to Prince William Sound and on the eastern part of the Kenai Peninsula. The Tongass National Forest includes the bulk of the panhandle of Alaska south of Glacier Bay National Monument. Of the total acreage of 20,741,076 acres, something under 5 million acres support timber stands that can now be considered commercially operable. On another 3 to 4 million acres are stands which are not operable by today's standards but which may become operable over the course of the next 20 or 30 years as the efficiency and effectiveness of logging methods increase. Of the remaining 12 million acres, something over half consists of mountaintops, glaciers, snowfields, and other areas which are of virtually no use at the present time. The remainder of the acreage is muskeg, and 71197-56-13

stands of timber too sparse or growing at too high an elevation to be considered potentially operable.

There is practically no grazing by domestic livestock, and practically no areas suitable to support year-round livestock operations. Deer and bear exist on national forest areas in substantial numbers, and moose in some portions of the forests. Fur bearers are common.

There is a pattern of land use under permit similar to that found in national forests elsewhere. A total of over 1,100 special use permits are now in effect on the 2 national forests. There is also a pattern of recreation use, especially heavy in the portion of the Chugach National Forest between Anchorage and Seward.

Of special interest to the committee is the policy followed on the national forests in Alaska of eliminating areas from national-forest status for homesites, and to facilitate community development. Over the past 10 years, a total of 107,372 acres have been eliminated from the 2 national forests for these purposes. Another special policy for national forest operations in Alaska is the requirement that, with certain relatively minor exceptions, logs cut from national forests to be given at least primary manufacture within the Territory.

TIMBER MANAGEMENT ACTIVITIES

There is an active and rapidly growing forest industry in southeast Alaska which depends almost entirely on Tongass National Forest timber for its raw material. The committee is familiar with the long-continued efforts of the Forest Service to attract the pulp industry to southeast Alaska. These efforts are now bearing fruit in a series of developments of great potential significance to southeast Alaska. Prior to 1953 the forest industry of southeast Alaska consisted of four major sawmills and a number of small sawmills. Since that date the forest industry picture here has almost completely changed complexion. The House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee is justified in feeling a real sense of accomplishment for its share in bringing about this changed complexion. In 1953 the new modern plywood plant of Alaska Plywood Corp. was brought into production in Juneau. And in late 1954 a long-established sawmill at Wrangell was reactivated and brought into production.

Also in 1954, the $50-million high-alpha cellulose pulp plant of Ketchikan Pulp Co. was brought into production at Ward Cove near Ketchikan. This plant is now producing at the rate of around 400 tons a day with operations stabilized and the plant working at a good level of efficiency. Ketchikan Pulp Co. is a joint venture of American Viscose Corp. and Puget Sound Pulp & Timber Co. It came into being as a result of its backers' willingness to establish a new enterprise based on a 50-year contract with the Forest Service for 1,500 million cubic feet of timber. One and one-half billion cubic feet of timber is roughly equivalent to 8,300 million board-feet of timber. This contract provides for redetermination of stumpage rates at 5-year periods.

The start of these two new industries has marked the long-awaited beginning of a new era in forest products manufacture in the Territory of Alaska.

And the march onward continues. In June of 1954 the Forest Service made a preliminary award for a 3 billion board-foot sale near Wrangell to the Pacific Northern Timber Co. of Wrangell. The sale contract, which was executed by the company last March, calls for the construction of a sawmill prior to December 31, 1957, and the construction of a pulp-manufacturing plant of at least 80 tons daily capacity prior to December 31, 1962. Members of the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee were instrumental in helping Pacific Northern Timber Co. find a way to acquire a plant site, partly on tidelands, near Wrangell. This, too, is a 50-year sale with provision for determination of stumpage rates at 5-year periods and other features that are similar to the contract with Ketchikan Pulp Co.

A third large pulp-timber sale was started on its way last August with the preliminary award of a 50-year contract for 7,500 million board-feet to GeorgiaPacific Alaska Co. This timber-sale contract calls for the construction of a plant for the manufacture of pulp prior to July 1, 1961. This company has now posted $100,000 in cash and negotiable securities which would be forfeited in event of failure to qualify for final award and execute the contract. The company is investigating sites in the immediate vicinity of Juneau for its planned newsprint mill. The size of plant contemplated, and the rate of cut contemplated, will make this proposed Juneau operation comparable in size and amount of employment to the operation of Ketchikan Pulp Co. at Ketchikan.

Still another large pulp-timber sale is now under active consideration by the Forest Service. Alaska Lumber & Pulp Co., Inc., an Alaska corporation which