Mr. GUTTING. One last question: You mention a proliferation of cooperative agreements between Federal agencies and the State. Does the Commission have a view as to whether or not there should be some single body, some organization which would oversee wildlife, both on Federal and State land, some kind of single mechanism with respect to making decisions as to wildlife?

Mr. PARKER. That is when we brought the Federal agencies and the Alaska State agencies, primarily, the Department of Fish and Game and Natural Resources, together to map out plans. We have a group working on this. As best I see it right now, if there were a continuing Federal-State Commission or other entity for formal land management in Alaska, a subunit of that would be a fish and game management organization which would be Federal-State and would relate to the larger body and also to its constituent agencies in the State of Alaska, independently.

In other words, it wouldn't just be a division of a larger State division but an independent entity of its own.

When I said we were working toward a formal overall State and Federal fish and game agreement, that is what I was referring to.

Mr. GUTTING. What role would the Native corporations have? Mr. PARKER. The Native corporations would play strong regional roles as major landholders in certain areas and having a good deal of the prime habitat under their control, the intention would be to sign three-way agreements between the landowner, Federal agencies and the State of Alaska. Actually, I would hope it would be between. the Secretary of the Interior or Agriculture, as appropriate, the Governor of Alaska and the landowners, so all agencies would be under this one cooperative umbrella. In exchange for certain tax remissions or other gains from the Government, the Natives would contribute their lands which are critical for habitat to the overall management pool.

Maybe you are aware of the considerable discussion we have had with Fish and Wildlife Service. What we want to do is take their work and refine it and make it a statewide operation.

Along this same line, we have recommended in the book we are providing you and in our testimony consideration of what is called a land bank, which would be a means for the Natives to take land out of development and put it into a nondevelopment status. Certainly most of the habitat areas would take care of that.

Mr. LEGGETT. Mr. Thornton.

Mr. THORNTON. Under your proposal, you would have buffer zones with the major decisions made by a joint planning commission?

Mr. PARKER. The joint commission would be a planning and classification entity. The land manager would have the same management responsibilities as any Federal manager on Federal lands. The difference would be primarily in planning and classification. Since the Secretary of the Interior would have the veto power over Federal lands and the Governor of Alaska would have veto power over State lands, incorporated over this, we don't see any damage being done to anybody's sovereignty.

Mr. THORNTON. Aren't we confusing and confounding the management in these areas by putting in an overlay agency, a joint Federal State agency which acts through another Federal agency? Isn't that a fairly complex system we are developing?

Mr. PARKER. No; the public would be dealing with a joint FederalState Commission rather than a single agency. We regard that as one of the more desirable facets of this.

Mr. THORNTON. There would be a single agency in the field managing these areas and they would be taking their direction from the Planning Commission.

Mr. PARKER. Under classification and regulations for implementing the classification would, as we see it now, be written by the management agency. We don't see the commission developing the kind of staff which would get into the regulations. We see it as a very small commission which, in effect, serves as a forum for Federal-State planning with most of the planning inputs coming from the various agencies of concern and with the commission staff being a very small, smaller than the present one, of five or six very high class

Mr. THORNTON. What interest does the Federal Government have in permitting the State to have a management role or a management say in Federal lands, when the State has already been allocated a significant allotment of 14 million acres in Alaska?

Mr. PARKER. Well, primarily because there is going to be a substantial State management role on Federal lands in any case, depending on the Federal designation the State presence will be there and water quality control, as designated to the States, under the 1966 act will be there in overall economic development, police powers and a host of other things. So we don't regard this as major intrusion. Another thing the land is recommended under Commission proposals for retention under Federal systems. All you are talking about is a forum for working out what Federal system will exist on these lands eventually. It seems to us there are certain advantages to the Federal Government in having the concurrence of the State of Alaska as to future management.

Mr. THORNTON. The question, then, is in other States of this country, we have States playing a certain role on Federal lands and the State government works out a cooperative agreement with the Government, why not In Alaska?

Mr. PARKER. We have reviewed the work of past commissions and the only major difference between what we are proposing and what has gone on in the past in the form of reasonable planning organizations is that ours would be a single unit, rather than multi-State. In the River Basin Commissions and so forth, the State presence is not as strong as it is in this one. The State doesn't have the veto power. On ours, the Commission has not made any major commitment of State lands to this particular program at the moment, because we are dealing with the D-2 lands which are all Federal. But the Governor has in his proposal made a substantial commitment of State lands to a cooperative arrangement. This, of course, would require ratification by the legislature if this were to occur. Therefore, we have not taken that step as yet.

Mr. THORTON. No further questions, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. LEGGETT. Are you working with Mr. Bohlen's group very closely?

Mr. PARKER. Yes; we will be working as that group gets under way, we will be submitting all the input at the staff level as time will permit.

Mr. LEGGETT. How does your staff compare to the Bohlen staff? Buff, how many do you have who will be wing with you?

Mr. BOHLEN. Eighteen.

Mr. LEGGETT. That compares to how many folks you have?

Mr. PARKER. Ten.

Mr. LEGGETT. It seems as though you have an awful lot of staff work to do on this. The work of this Commission should not be treated lightly, I don't think. Is it not the intent of the Department of the Interior to give considerable credence to the joint Federal-State Commissions?

Mr. BOHLEN. It certainly is.

Mr. LEGGETT. That was the original intent of this committee. I hesitate to substitute any judgment for the judgment of 40 or 50 manyears of work which has been put into these Commissions. So I think we ought to be very careful as we make our overall decisions.

I would hope we would work together and would get, over the next several months, status reports from both Interior and, I guess-we have also asked for staff reports from your group, the Commission, Mr. Parker, so that we will be tracking what you are doing.

Mr. PARKER. I would hope we could focus the problems we are having and in a way have the committee and the Interior act as an arbitrator of some of the differences.

Mr. LEGGETT. Mr. Akaka.
Mr. AKAKA. No questions.
Mr. LEGGETT. Mr. Hughes.
Mr. HUGHES. No questions.

Mr. LEGGETT. That is all for today. Our committee does plan to go to Alaska in August and will be reviewing the matter in the field.

We have additional witnesses. We have Mr. Jack Carlson, Chamber of Commerce of the United States.

We can schedule your testimony for 2 o'clock this afternoon or come back some afternoon.

We are going to holding these hearings on a number of days in July, August and September. You can testify today or at some other time you want to do that.

Mr. CARLSON. That will be fine.

Mr. POOLE. Anything you say.
Mr. LEGGETT. Ms. Rich?

[No response.]

Mr. LEGGETT. We will be back at 2 o'clock. The committee stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 12:10 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned to reconvene at 2 p.m., Friday, June 10, 1977.]

AFTERNOON SESSION

Mr. LEGGETT. The meeting of the subcommittee will be in order. We will now take testimony of Mr. Jack Carlson, vice president and chief economist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Mr. Carlson, your statement will appear in the record at this point. [The prepared statement of Mr. Carlson follows:]

STATEMENT OF DR. JACK CARLSON, VICE PRESIDENT, CHAMBER OF COMMERCE OF THE UNITED STATES

I am Jack Carlson, Vice President of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States. On behalf of the Chamber's 67,000 members in all 50 states, I appear before this Subcommittee to oppose H.R. 1652.

H.R. 1652 would dedicate 67,904,000 acres of land in Alaska to create or expand ten Federal Wildlife Refuges or Ranges. The lands involved are primarily Federally owned, but the bill also authorizes acquisition of private lands within the boundaries. The Secretary also would be given authority to enlarge the stated boundaries to the extent of gifts or bequests of adjoining lands.

H.R. 1652 would increase the size in Alaska of the single-purpose refuge system of the Fish and Wildlife Service from 20,000,000 to 88,000,000 acres, an increase of 340 percent. This expanded system would be 23 percent of the total area of Alaska.

Our consideration of H.R. 1652 has overlapped with our review of H.R. 39 now before the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee. We naturally look at the combination of proposals in H.R. 1652 for refuges and the proposals in H.R. 39 for parks, rivers, and forests. The magnitude of these proposals when totalled is truly awesome. They constitute over 48 percent of Alaska in the four systems; over 43 percent of Alaska would be put into single-purpose systems. The following table shows the additions as proposed by Secretary Morton in 1973, by H.R. 39 and by H.R. 1652:

TABLE 1.-PROPOSALS FOR 4 SYSTEMS ENLARGEMENT IN ALASKA
[In millions of acres except percent]

To give some feel for the magnitude of the 163,000,000 acres in single-use systems if H.R. 1652 and also H.R. 39 were passed, it would be:

(a) Equal to an 83 mile wide strip of land from the Atlantic to the Pacific3,000 miles long;

(b) Larger than any other state except Texas;

(c) More than three times as large as the six New England States.

If only H.R. 1652 were passed it would be:

(a) Equal to a 35 mile wide strip of land from Atlantic City to San Francisco3,000 miles long;

(b) Larger than 38 states;

(c) Larger than the six New England states.

THE EFFECT OF H.R. 1652

I would like to separate the effect of H.R. 1652 into two parts:

(1) It "recognizes" that certain lands that sustain migratory fowl and other wildlife are of great value to the State and the Nation; and

(2) It sets about to realize these values by prohibiting all other uses and enjoyment that these lands and resources are capable of and provides that these lands are to be used only as "natural wildlands".

Let me make very clear that we support the use and enjoyment of the migratory fowl and other wildlife associated with lands in Alaska and elsewhere. Such use and enjoyment have both their personal and commercial significance. We expect that such use and enjoyment are ongoing under present management authorities and practices. An example of the impressive resources involved in these lands and waters concerns one drainage area, among others, in one of the ten refuges covered by the bill-the Kvichak River drainage. That drainage produced from 1960 to 1969 an average of 33 percent of the U.S. catch of salmon and 16 percent of the world catch.