The net acreage of present primitive areas was then 1,094,821. The present net acreage is 1,094,164. All but two of the remaining primitive areas have received wilderness or wild area reclassification studies. Proposals are now pending for reclassification on most of them.

The Mount Dana-Minarets proposal has been submitted to the Chief of the Forest Service in a form which will enlarge the area by 25 percent; some 26,000 acres. The High Sierra Primitive Area, the largest in California, may be reclassified with final boundaries that add some 100,000 extra acres. The individual figures are listed on the next page.

Here are the figures on the 10 California primitive areas:

Agua Tibia, established 1931; present net acreage, 25,995; 1945 net acreage, 26,225;

Desolation Valley, established 1931; present net acreage, 41,343; 1945 net acreage, 40,700;

Devil Canyon-Bear Canyon, established 1932; present net acreage, 35.267; 1945 net acreage, 36,200;

Emigrant Basin, established 1931; present net acreage, 97,020; 1945 net acreage, 97,020.

High Sierra, established 1931; present net acreage, 393,899; 1945 net acreage, 393,899;

Mount Dana-Minarets, established 1931; present net acreage 1945 net acreage, 82,181;

Salmon Trinity Alps, established 1932; 223,300 present net acreage; 1945 net acreage, 223,300;

San Rafael, established 1932; present net acreage, 74,160; 1945 net acreage, 74,160;

South Warner, established 1931; present net acreage, 68,870; 1945 net acreage, 68,242;

Vetana, established 1931; present net acreage 52,129; 1945 net acreage, 52,894;

Total, present net acreage, 1,094,164: 1945 net acreage, 1,094,821. Creation of other wild or wilderness areas within California's national forest lands is also under consideration.

The proposal for a new wild area within the Sequoia National Forest will be advertised by the end of this week. This is the Domelands Area which has been approved by the Washington office with a proposed acreage of 64,720. In addition, the Forest Service has classified a number of special recreational, botanical, geological, and historical areas under existing U-3 regulations. There are over 20 such areas in our State involving many thousands of acres.

Now I have cited the statistical history of California's wild, wilderness, and primitive areas because it justifies our conclusion that they have received proper protection under existing legislation.

Our present policy has not changed during the last 4 years that we have objected to various wilderness proposals that have been advanced before Congress. During those years we have continued to support recreational appropriations to meet growing recreation needs. That policy, as I said in my opening remarks, supports the establishment of wilderness under the general objectives of multiple use as an administrative policy for the national forests.

It also supports the establishment and maintenance of wilderness areas in national parks to serve the recreational, scenic, scientific, and

educational needs of the people. It supports the authority presently vested in the Secretaries of Agriculture and Interior with respect to establishment, maintenance, and preservation of these areas.

I do not feel that S. 174 will achieve any more protection for wilderness, a goal of the bill set forth in section 2, subdivision (a) so as to, and a quote:

*** leave them unimpaired for future use and enjoyment as wilderness, and so as to provide for the protection of these areas, the preservation of their wilderness character ***.

Region 5 of the U.S. Forest Service published an administrative study dealing with High Sierra Primitive Area management problems just last year. According to the regional forester's 1960 annual report, this administrative study on wilderness problems is the first of this kind. I commend this material to this committee.

Principal challenges and threats to the "idealistic wilderness concept of naturalness" in this primitive area are created by the wilderness recreationists themselves. The ranger recommends the limitation of organized group use to less than 20 people. The very wilderness groups that are advocating passage of S. 174 annually sponsor wilderness trips in this area along the John Muir Trail involving 100 or more persons in a single concentrated trail party.

The other recommendation he makes would require use of sanitation facilities and construction of manmade trails around fragile meadow areas. These problems pose the real threats to wilderness. No expansion in wilderness acreage can ever adequately reduce the impact of man without intelligent management controls on usage. The bill, in my opinion, will hamper the management function by taking away from local informed officials the authority to make wise decisions when they are needed.

The problems caused by private lands lying within the boundaries. of existing primitive areas, I do not believe are solved by section 4 of the bill. Under present negotiation procedures and exchange of lands these problems are being resolved. If Congress is required to appropriate funds to acquire these lands because land exchanges and necessary boundary changes are hampered by the terms of the bill, the reclassification process could be delayed indefinitely.

In my judgment, the bill provides for contradictory legislative procedures. At the outset, both Houses of Congress will be required to approve the inclusion of all areas now classified as wild or wilderness into a wilderness system. Existing primitive areas have not already been reclassified because they involve numerous boundary change questions.

The bill itself recognizes the need for further evaluation of resource development that would be eliminated before the primitive areas are committed to the single use of a most limited form of outdoor

recreation.

If there is to be a new policy regarding wilderness areas, if there is to be a change in the statutes which have given the Department of Agriculture flexibility in establishing wilderness areas, if these decisions are now to be made by Congress, does it not follow that both Houses of Congress should by affirmative action authorize the creation of all wild or wilderness areas not so classified now?

The bill does provide for a concurrent affirmative vote on all existing wild or wilderness areas and those boundaries are now known. It does provide that future proposals for additions or eliminations shall also be treated in this normal legislative manner as are now parks and seashores. Why should there be an exception in the case of controversial and questionable primitive areas for which concurrent affirmative action is not required, according to the present bill?

In summation, may I say that the chamber is concerned that S. 174 would adversely affect necessary water and other resource development? It would hamper the orderly reclassification of primitive areas. It would eliminate flexibility in the management and expansion of present wilderness areas. It would prevent expansion of areas such as the Mount Dana Minarets in the reclassification process. It would delay and in some cases prevent the creation of new wild areas such as the Domelands in the Sequoia National Forest. It does not solve the problems of wilderness preservation which in our State are largely caused by wilderness recreationists.

We support the present flexibility in regulations of the Departments of Agriculture and Interior. We think they have worked well in the past and see no need for future legislation.

I want to thank the chairman and members of the committee for holding this hearing in California and for the opportunity to present these views.

Mr. JOHNSON. The pamphlet you mentioned will be made a part of the file.

Mr. SYMONS. Thank you.

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. W. Howard Gray, of the Nevada Mining Association, Inc.

STATEMENT OF W. HOWARD GRAY, NEVADA MINING

ASSOCIATION, INC.

Mr. GRAY. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, my name is W. Howard Gray. I am a practicing attorney at law, having been in active practice for approximately 35 years, and a resident of the State of Nevada during that entire period of time.

I am appearing on behalf of the Nevada Mining Association. The statement is given for the purpose of recording with you and your committee opposition and objection to the passage of the so-called wilderness bill, designated S. 174, which is before your committee for consideration.

First, I wish to endorse and join with Mr. Louis D. Gordon, executive secretary of the Nevada Mining Association, Inc., in his statement which has been prepared and filed with your committee under date of October 30, 1961.

In addition, I wish to add some further thoughts of my own.

We believe that S. 174 is contra to the multiple-use principle which the mining industry has wholeheartedly endorsed.

The wilderness bill, in my opinion, is basically objectionable for the reason that it would create a practical lockup of unknown and untold quantities of minerals. Prospecting is a continuous search for the undiscovered. It is necessary for the mining industry to be able to carry forward its search, not only in the time-honored manner of

looking for mineral deposits exposed upon the surface, but also to carry on exploration work relative to the possibility of underground ore bodies discoverable only through the most modern techniques.

The areas which would be encompassed within the wilderness area by virtue of S. 174 would not be subject to any practical means of opening up areas once forbidden to the prospector in his search for metals and minerals.

Fundamentally, the proposed bill is objectionable because it relegates industry relying upon natural resources to a station inferior to that of recreation, notwithstanding the importance of the products produced from the natural resources to the maintenance of our economic and social society. The irony of it all is that recreation itself is dependent upon the products of our natural resources.

History evidences that decadence sets in and a nation deteriorates when idleness becomes the paramount objective. The doctrine or philosophy is something which, in my opinion, cannot be condoned. The cold war in which we are now engaged is no less than a contest between freedom and free enterprise on one hand and communism and slavery on the other.

This Nation must have, through the agency of free enterprise, free and unrestrained access to the basic and fundamental products of nature upon which our complex system of society depends, if we are to be successful.

Without the minerals and metals extracted from the earth, we would be no better prepared to support the superiority of our political democratic doctrine than are the aborigines of continents whose advancement in society has not yet passed the "bow and arrow" age.

In our present contest with Soviet Russia, I am quite sure that you and your committee members recognize that the mechanical devices which presently deter the obvious desires of the leaders of the Soviet are devices made of the substance of our earth, which were producible only by virtue of free and unhampered access to mineral ore bodies and the development of the same through the agency of free enterprise.

Our self-preservation may well depend upon ore bodies which might well lie within one of the proposed wilderness areas.

The bill itself evidences, in my opinion, a very dangerous theory of legislation. The bill proposes that the executive branch of our Government can recommend the continued inclusion and exclusion of primitive areas in the wilderness system.

These recommendations become law unless one branch of our Federal legislature expressly rejects the Executive order. This doctrine of legislation, by and through the executive department, is foreign to our basic democratic processes, and extends powers to the executive department not contemplated in the basic constitutional concepts of our Government.

It amounts to an abdication on the part of the legislative department of those constitutional duties and responsibilities given to it by our basic law and which cannot, in our constitutional concepts, be delegated to the Executive. The procedure amounts to recognizing the Executive as being the lawmaker and Congress retaining only the right of rejection.

I submit that, at least in my opinion, the bill is unconstitutional on that particular point by virtue of the fact that Congress would be

delegating its legislative prerogative given to it by the Constitution of the United States, and letting the laws be made by the Executive.

The present wilderness system, which has produced wilderness areas and primitive areas as so designated by the Executive, are still open to prospecting and to the searchers for the development of mineral wealth. The passage of this bill and its signing into law would wipe out the present rights and privileges enjoyed by the mining industry. There is to be automatically included within the wilderness system, upon the passage of S. 174, each portion of each park, monument, or other unit in the national park system which embraces a continuous area of 5,000 acres or more without roads.

The area covered by this provision and the location thereof is unknown and undetermined and cannot be known until there is a complete survey of the parks, monuments, or units of the national park

system.

Certainly, it would be my presumption that this provision in the wilderness bill would entirely supersede and thereby repeal those present acts of Congress which permit mining in some monuments and parks.

It is submitted that Congress should not enact legislation until they know what areas are to be affected.

It was evidently the intent of the drafter of the wilderness system bill to blanket in as part of the wilderness system all of the presently existing wilderness areas, wild areas, canoe areas, and primitive areas, as well as parts of the national park system and part of the national wildlife refuges or game ranges.

The drafter of the proposed legislation provided that the addition of any area to, or the elimination of any area from, the wilderness system which is not specifically provided for under the provisions of the proposed act shall be made only after specific affirmative authorization by law for such addition or elimination.

We have assumed that from the use of this language, the drafter proposed that the wilderness system could not be increased beyond the area specified in the proposed bill without an enactment on the part of Congress.

However, there is nothing in the bill which prevents either the Secretary of Agriculture or the Secretary of Interior from creating new areas which may be designated by some name other than wilderness, and within which restrictions and limitations upon mining and prospecting may be put into effect, which restrictions and limitations would be overly burdensome to the mining industry.

It is submitted that upon the creation of the wilderness system, if such a system is created, that should be an end of all interference with the industries depending upon the natural resources.

As a member of, and as counsel for, the Nevada Mining Association, Inc., representing the mining industry of the State of Nevada, and as counsel for several mining interests, I sincerely urge that your committee report unfavorably upon the measure.

Thank you for your indulgence and the privilege of expressing my thoughts.

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Gray.

Are there any questions.

Thank you very much.