of Agriculture and the American Forestry Association, one of the oldest and most highly respected conservation groups in this country. This association, incidentally, has done more than any other group to interest people in our wilderness reserves, and it has taken thousands of Americans into forest wilderness areas by pack train. I hereby request permission to put into the record at the conclusion of my remarks the Department of Agriculture report on S. 1176, the statement given by Chief McArdle of the Forest Service at the committee hearings last year, and a letter from the American Forestry Association, expressing opposition to one of the 1958 revisions of the bill.

The CHAIRMAN. All these articles will be carried in the record.

Senator WATKINS. I believe that assurances may be given this committee that objections from the Forest Service have been largely eliminated in this latest draft of this bill.

But I would have more reliance in accepting such claims if the legislation were under joint consideration with our colleagues who have been handling Forest Service legislation regularly.

It most certainly is important enough to justify joint consideration. In addition, I wish to remind my colleagues that this committee initiated action on a bill which was recently enacted into law providing for the establishment of a National Outdoor Recreation Review Commission. As you are aware, Senators Anderson, Barrett, Neuberger, and Watkins of this committee were named by the Vice President to represent the Senate on this Commission. Between now and September 30, 1961, this Commission will conduct a survey of existing and needed outdoor recreation areas in this country and make recommendations to the Congress.

I presume that this Commission will devote considerable attention to the need for wilderness preserves throughout the country. And it is my guess that the most pressing need for such areas will prove to be here in the East and in the South, not in the West, where the bulk of our public wilderness is set aside. As we study this overall problem in the search for facts and figures to justify implementing legislation, we can recommend action that may be necessary to protect any essential area that may be threatened with damage or unnecessary invasion. I also request permission to introduce the text of Public Law 85-470 at the conclusion of my remarks and have that printed in the record.

The CHAIRMAN. It may be printed in the record.

Senator WATKINS. In view of the existence of this congressionally established Commission, there appears little justification for urgency in approving S. 4028, directly and widely affecting all of our States but particularly the 11 Western States and the newly adopted State of Alaska. As a westerner who loves the mountain and desert wilderness, I still have not been convinced as to the necessity for granting a special status to lands which have been reserved for a half century as national forest lands. If we cannot protect these lands as specialuse forest areas, wilderness refuges, or national parks, then how can we give them any more real protection by merely affirming that they are a part of a nebulous wilderness preserve?

It is urgently necessary that we explore such new legislative sources without adequately testing remedies in the framework of existing

statutes. As former chairman of the Indian Affairs Subcommittee, I seriously question the advisability of making any reference to Indian trust lands in such reservation. That land belongs to them, not to the United States and not to the wilderness lovers, including myself, who exist all over the United States. The Indians were given reservation lands that were of little-known value. Now some tribes are at long last in a position to develop some of these lands for their mineral, agricultural, and industrial values. Nothing injected into such a bill should handicap the Indians in their most commendable efforts to become economically self-sufficient. If this means finding and preserving wilderness areas elsewhere, then I think we are morally obligated to do so, or at least to try sincerely to do so before requesting the Indians to make such a lopsided public contribution.

I also direct the attention of this committee to the fact that this proposed national wilderness preservation system not only includes a grand total of something like 55 million acres of lands, but S. 4028 also provides for additions to this system from the public lands, which, as I have indicated, are largely confined to the 11 Western States and Alaska.

These additions could be made by Executive order, a considerable departure from present requirement that comparable national park reservations can be made only by the Congress.

There is a proviso possibly inserted to reassure its gullible folk in the public land crown colony States that public hearings can be requested, and that this secretion of Executive order can be forestalled by passage of a concurrent congressional resolution opposing such proposed action. Most of the people of my State don't read the Federal Register. I read it very little myself, as a matter of fact. And they probably would not know about these additions to be made to the wilderness system, about the proclamations and what not. They are not organized, they do not have means to come in and protest that sort of thing. It seems to me that is just giving more power to a Secretary of Agriculture and a Secretary of the Interior than ought to be given. I say that notwithstanding the fact that the present Secretary of Agriculture is from my own State, and Secretary Seaton is a westerner also. I don't think we ought to trust any Secretaries in any of the departments to make reservations of public lands such as is contemplated in this bill.

I remember the citizens of Wyoming and other areas in the West, how they feel about these reservations without Congress or their Representatives having a chance to authorize them as it should be. The public domain should not be turned over to 2 men in the heads of 2 departments in the executive department to pretty much do as they please with them.

Such procedure obviously was drafted to beguile us into believing that further large-scale withdrawals of western lands can be prevented if this legislation passes.

This is not a detailed analysis of the bill, because I have not had time to give it the study it deserves in the past few hectic weeks. However, it does raise a few questions. I feel we are obligated to thoroughly explore these matters and any valid objectives before we can report out such a controversial measure.

Mr. Chairman, as I indicated, I have work at the Judiciary Committee that requires a quorum there. They have difficulty, often, in getting a quorum. I assume they are going ahead with their hearing. But at least I have made for the record what I think are the views of my people out West, and I believe them to be the views of practically every western governor, practically every legislator in the 11 Western States, when this matter is fairly presented to them.

I think they deserve some consideration in this matter. I want to point out, also, that the lands you are talking about are not going to run away. The Forest Service isn't going to be withdrawn, the protection it has put over the forest is still there. As a boy, I remember the inauguration, as just a very small lad, when the Forest Service first took over the regulation of the forest. Off and on I have been on the great national forests in Utah. Practically all of our water that we use for our cities and towns and our industry and our agriculture rises on those forest lands.

I want to say to you, you can go back there now, and aside from the improvement that has been made in the matter of having some trails and roads, and the preservation of our timber, those forests look very, very much the same as they did when I was a lad and used to go out fishing in the lakes and into the mountains.

So they are going to be there, and the BLM lands are still going to be there, unless divine providence changes the climate and sends enough rainfall so that nature will be altered. They will still be there. It has been fixed for a long time. The interest of the people who are using these lands for various purposes, including recreation and that sort of thing, are going right on using them. We are not going to lose anything by waiting until the Outdoor Review Commission can do its work. I assure you as one member I am going to do my level best to see that we do an effective piece of work, not only in the West, but also in the East where we think they need some of the area here that is apparently going to waste now made a wilderness area, too, and have it developed and taken care of according to the plans.

I want it understood that the people of the West are not against the spirit of this bill, at least to have these areas reserved for the various recreational purposes, but they also want you to know that the development of our natural resources has not begun, really, in most of those States. All over the West, explorations have been made for minerals, uranium, and that sort of thing. We would have had a pretty tough time if all of the southeastern part of Utah, the so-called Colorado Plateau, had been reserved in a wilderness area, and you could not touch it, when we wanted to get uranium. Now they are able to do it. They have not ruined that place. Every place they have dug uranium out can be smoothed over and in 2 or 3 years you would not know they had dug there at all.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator, we have a long list of witnesses who are scheduled to appear here this morning. We are glad to give you the opportunity to appear because of your engagements.

Senator WATKINS. I am through now, and I just want to say that I am a member of the committee also.

(The documents referred to are as follows:)

Hon. ARTHUR V. WATKINS,

SALT LAKE CITY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE,
Salt Lake City, Utah, July 11, 1958.

United States Senate, Washington, D. C.

MY DEAR ARTHUR: Our chamber committees on recreation and conservation, livestock, mining, and agriculture have completed a study of the legislation to establish a national wilderness preservation system; i. e., S. 4028 and H. R. 13013. Each committee recommended that this legislation be strongly opposed. In 1956 similar legislation was introduced and our chamber, after studies were made by the appropriate committees, advised you of our disapproval of that legislation. We are not opposed to the recreational use of the public domain. In fact we feel we are as strongly interested in such use as those who have sponsored the "wilderness" legislation which we oppose. But we are convinced that the selection and administration of recreational lands should be accomplished by a group representative of the full interests of the community, and that the principle of multiple use should be faithfully followed in order that the best interests of both the economic and recreational life of the community would be developed.

Since the 1956 legislation was introduced and prior to introduction of S. 4028, legislation to make a thorough review of “national outdoor recreation resources" has been introduced, passed by both Houses of the Congress, and signed into law by the President on June 28, 1958. I am referring to Public Law 85-470 of the 85th Congress, 2d session.

This law provides for a National Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission of 15 members to investigate the recreation resource potential of the public land and water areas of the country. This Commission is instructed to report to the Congress not later than September 1, 1961.

S. 4028 and its companion House bill H. R. 13013, aside from being objectionable legislation, are actually contrary to the intent of Congress in regard to recreational use of the public domain. Those bills propose immediate legislation on matters which have been set apart by Congress for full study in order to facilitate proper legislation at some later date.

We will appreciate your consideration of our views in this matter in the event S. 4028 and H. R. 13013 are brought up for House or Senate action.

DEAR SENATOR MURRAY: This is in reply to your letter of February 15, 1957, requesting the views of this Department on S. 1176, a bill to establish on public lands of the United States a national wilderness preservation system for the permanent good of the whole people, to provide for the protection and administration of the areas within this system by existing Federal agencies and for the gathering and dissemination of information to increase the knowledge and appreciation of wilderness for its appropriate use and enjoyment by the people, to establish a National Wilderness Preservation Council, and for other purposes.

Although we are sympathetic to the general objective of the bill, we recommend that it not be enacted. We recommend that Congress consider in lieu thereof a substitute bill submitted with this report, which is designed to give statutory recognition to those parts of the objectives of the pending bill which fall solely within the responsibilities of the Department of Agriculture and which generally have been provided for administratively over a long period of years.

S. 1176 would establish a national wilderness preservation system to be comprised of certain areas within the national forests, the national parks, the national wildlife refuges and ranges, Indian reservations, and such other areas

as shall be designated. The bill would establish as a desirable policy of Congress dedication of a system of wilderness areas, the protection of such areas in perpetuity, and the dissemination of information about them. The bill would include, in the national wilderness preservation system all of the existing roadless, wild, and wilderness areas in the national forests, and would direct that presently classified primitive areas be reported to the National Wilderness Preservation Council for inclusion in the national wilderness preservation system by January 1, 1966, with appropriate boundary modifications as may be made upon reclassification.

Proposed additions, modifications, or eliminations of any national-forest area to, in, or from the national wilderness preservation system may be made only after 90 days' public notice, and the holding of a public hearing if requested. If changes are proposed, they shall be submitted to the National Wilderness Preservation Council, which in turn shall submit the recommendation to Congress. After the expiration of 120 calendar days of continuous session of Congress following receipt of the recommendations by the Congress, the recommendations would become effective if there has not been passed by either House a resolution opposing the proposed changes. Acquisition of private lands within the areas included in the national wilderness preservation system would be authorized.

Any commodity production, lumbering, prospecting, mining, the removal of mineral deposits including oil and gas, water-management practices involving diversion, manipulation of the plant cover, water impoundment, or reservoir storage, would be prohibited by statute. Roads would be prohibited, except for minimum administration of the areas and for ingress and egress to privately owned property. Motor vehicles, other mechanical transport, delivery of persons or supplies, structures, and installations would be prohibited if in excess of the minimum needed to administer the areas. There would be no prohibition against the use of pack animals in connection with the administration or use of the wilderness. Grazing by other domestic livestock, and use of motorboats and aircraft would be permitted if already well-established practices, but would be classed as nonconforming uses with a directive to terminate when this can be accomplished with equity to, or in agreement with, those making such uses.

A National Wilderness Preservation Council would be created consisting of the Chief of the Forest Service, Director of the National Park Service, Director of Fish and Wildlife Service, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and six citizen members to be appointed by the President. The duties of the Council would be to serve as a repository for information about the national wilderness preservation system, to transmit to the Congress proposed changes in the wilderness boundaries, to serve as a clearinghouse of information about wilderness, to make, sponsor, and coordinate surveys of wilderness needs, to advise with Government officials, and to report annually to the Congress.

The Department believes that wilderness is a proper use of the national forests and has steadfastly maintained continuity of policy in this regard for over 30 years. In 1924, the first area for preservation of wilderness in the national forests was administratively established. It comprised a large part of what is now the Gila wilderness area in New Mexico. In 1926, parts of the Superior roadless area in northern Minnesota were given special protection. The first national-forest primitive area was established in 1930 under secretarial regulation. By 1939, there were 73 primitive areas and 2 roadless areas, totaling 14.2 million acres.

In 1939, new secretarial regulations were issued providing for the establishment of wilderness and wild areas in the national forests. The new regulations provided for greater stability and protection to the areas established thereunder than did the earlier regulation issued 10 years previously. Wilderness and wild areas meet essentially the same criteria, except that wilderness areas are larger than 100,000 acres and wild areas range from 5,000 to 100,000 acres. Wilderness areas are established by the Secretary of Agriculture whereas the Chief of the Forest Service establishes wild areas. Since 1939 the Department has managed primitive areas in accordance with the secretarial regulations for wilderness areas, and has been restudying these areas, making boundary adjustments where needed, and reclassifying those areas or parts thereof which are predominantly valuable for wilderness as wilderness or wild areas. About 40 percent of the primitive areas have been reclassified and 9 new areas have been established.