wilderness-the Forest Service has at once too little and too much power to do so much wilderness to lose.... I did not know then that so much of my time and effort would be necessary to ensure that continuity-if you read my testimony before Senator Frank Church's hearings on forest management practices on our public lands, held in April, 1971, you will see why. I am sorry if I upset you, but only the People (through Congress) can protect wilderness the Forest Service has at once too little and too much power to do so reliably. Witness the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest and surrounding primitive land. I am pleased that many of the Forest Supervisors are asking for public input, but I am disappointed in the lack of publicity and the inconvenient choice of time and place. Please keep me informed of any such sessions in the WMNF. Yours truly, GEORGE LANGFORD. CARY, N.C., June 15, 1972. Mr. FREDERICK A. DORRELL, Supervisor, Monongahela National Forest, DEAR TONY: Thank you for sending me the draft management plan for the Meadow Creek planning unit of the Monongahela National Forest. This plan is a disaster in one respect: it exposes the utter failure of the Forest Service to provide continuity in management of wild areas. In a letter to Miss Helen McGinnis of Pittsburgh, Pa., dated April 24, 1970, Jack Weissling of your office listed the Anthony Creek and Meadow Creek Pioneer Study Units, totalling 3294 acres, as areas "where commercial timber sales are currently excluded". I also have a map on which Jack marked the location of these two and other Pioneer Study Units as well. When I received notice of these "Listening Sessions" held for the Meadow Creek unit, I circulated an announcement of my own to members of the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy (I was then chairman of that group's Wilderness Preservation Committee); a copy of that letter is enclosed. In it, I listed reasons for preserving existing wild lands; at the Listening Session I added that the Meadow Creek Pioneer Study Unit was an unbroken watershed and therefore was ideally suited for preservation-it was easy to protect from outside influence. These reasons are still pertinent. The draft management plan for the Meadow Creek unit utterly fails to mention that part of that unit (all land draining into Lake Sherwood) is currently a Pioneer Study Area. The plan states only that no land in the planning unit qualifies for "Pioneer Zone" status. The plan instead proposes timber operations and construction of temporary haul roads aimed towards altering the wildlife population of this formerly inviolate (since circa 1935) area. This cavalier attitude toward your administratively "protected" areas underscores the need for Congressional action to place significant amounts of the remaining wild, roadless lands in the East in the National Wilderness Preservation System. If you have a policy that some or all of the Pioneer Study Areas in the Monongahela National Forest are not qualified for protection in their present condition, please advise me of this change; you may need to file an environmental impact statement for the proposed alteration of the ecological balance and public usefulness of the affected areas. Intensive management of a formerly unmanaged area and alteration of the flora and fauna a priori entail significant impacts which must be considered beforehand according to the National Environmental Policy Act. The draft management plan for the Meadow Creek unit fails to mention the loss of unmanipulated ecosystems and reduction of the degree of primitive and solitudinal experiences available in the unit, through road construction (even temporary roads have a lasting impact on wildlife and the challenge of untracked forests) and the cutting of timber. The significance of these proposed actions is left unstated; there is no epitaph for the defunct Meadow Creek Pioneer Study Unit. Don't you understand that some small part of our environment should be left as wild as possible, to serve to correct any management errors we may now be making and to serve as benchmarks to evaluate the success of our attempts to improve on Nature? Please consider the alternative omitted by the draft management plan for the Meadow Creek Unit: that the existing Pioneer Study Unit be affirmed as the best and highest use of that portion of the Meadom Creek Drainage lying above Lake Sherwood. I would personally like to see specific reasons why this alternative was so flagrantly dismissed. Yours truly, GEORGE LANGFORD. PITTSBURGH, PA., July 30, 1971. Forest Supervisor Tony Dorrell has announced the first public-participation meeting under the Forest Service's new "System for Managing the National Forests of the East"-see the enclosed copy of his letter for time and place. This meeting is important because the Meadow Creek Watershed has in it one of the Monongahela National Forest's ten Pioneer Study Units. It is important that these small wild areas (they average 3 or 4 square miles-about 2000 acres) be protected and preserved perpetually—not just temporarily, so we should press for a strong commitment by the Forest Service to let them remain undisturbed by logging or roadbuilding. I feel strongly that permanent protection for these wild areas is necessary for several reasons. (1) Men can develop an attachment for such places and can watch them change over their lifetimes. (2) "Musical" Pioneer Areas (to be exchanged for logged-over or burned areas when convenient) smack of consumerism-who would feel inclined to take care with such throwaway wilderness. (3) We should pass on to our children some small unexploited part of our near-by environment—perhaps even more than what was begrudged us. (4) We know too little about the delicate balance of nature, and have tried too many disastrous experiments to risk altering all our wild lands-let these unmanipulated forest ecosystems, which have been so abused in the past but which have recovered so well so far, act as nuclei or seedbeds-should the current experiment (clearcutting) fail. (5) The quality of life in West Virginia will be much improved by providing people refuges to offset the depressing condition of so much of the state. GEORGE LANGFORD, Chairman, Wilderness Preservation Committee, CARY, N.C., July 7, 1972. Mr. DEL W. THORSEN, Supervisor, National Forests in North Carolina, DEAR MR. THORSEN: Thank you for sending me the background information for the Listening Session on the Mills River drainage of the Pisgah National Forest. This information is vastly superior to that provided by the Monongahela National Forest's planning team for their first Listening Session for the Meadow Creek unit in West Virginia. I hope you will convey a copy of this "Information Sheet" (all 27 pages) to that team, care of Jack Weissling, USFS, P.O. Box 1231, Elkins, W. Va. 26241, for me. It is very difficult to make constructive criticism of Forest Service unit plans when soil surveys, previous management commitments, and timber surveys are either withheld or unavailable. I am sure it was inadvertent, but pages 11 and 12 are missing from the data you sent me. These are important, for they indicate the soil quality and types as well as the inventory of timber in the area. I hope you can send me these pages in time to make a better-informed input to your Listening Session. The following comments are made independently of any knowledge of the relative potentials of the various parts of the planning area for timber harvest and growth. I am not physically familiar with the area, having never been there, nor am I aawre of any citizen's proposals for preservation of de facto wilderness in the area. (I do not wish that this statement be considered to contradict any such proposals.) This planning unit is especially important because of its proximity to and visibility from the Blue Ridge Parkway and the inclusion of the Cradle of Forestry in America. I would like to compare the juxtaposition of the Fernow Experimental Forest and the Otter Creek de facto wilderness in West Virginia* with the juxtaposition of the Cradle of Forestry and that portion of the present Town of Hendersonville municipal watershed lying north of the Yellow Gap Road. The presence of unmanipulated ecosystems adjacent to an experimental forest provides important and irreplaceable scientific value for evaluation of the success of our efforts to improve on Nature, as well as providing a "gene bank" for correction of our present errors in the future. Both of these roadless watersheds (Otter Creek in W. Va. and your North Mills Creek and contiguous land) deserve preservation in their unmanaged condition for this reason alone. I propose that the (approximately 11,000 acre) portion of the City of Hendersonville municipal watershed lying north of the Yellow Gap Road be given maximum administrative protection and be eventually included in the National Wilderness Preservation System. I believe that proper control of visitor use of the area through a system of access permits would protect the quality of the water supply of the City of Hendersonville. Certainly, there must be precedent for such action already within the lands administered by the USDA or the NPS. Do not construct any more roads in or adjacent to this area. I suggest that intensive recreational and timber management activities be segregated elsewhere, as in your alternative 4, with without endangering the integrity of the above-proposed wilderness area. I am enclosing a second wilderness proposal for the Cranberry Backcountry in West Virginia, in which I made a similar proposal for "Pioneer Zone" management (with reservations) for part of the area. Do not convert the vast majority of the area to maximum timber/wildlife management (as in Alternative I), for that entails too much loss of wildernessrelated values in return for questionable economic gain (only 50% above the other alternatives). Private lands are much more extensive than public lands in the East, so there is more to be gained from improved management of private forests than from over-commitment of National Forest lands to timber production and "game farming". We should work together for additional subsidies and Forest Service aid for small private forests. You can make an immediate improvement in private forest management by raising the minimum bid prices for timber sales on National Forest land, thereby making intensive management of private timberland more profitable to the land owners. Thank you for the opportunity to make these suggestions. Please keep me informed of future management decisions for this area. Yours truly, GEORGE LANGFORD. CARY, N.C., July 15, 1972. Mr. DEL W. THORSEN, Supervisor, National Forests in North Carolina, Asheville, N.C. DEAR MR. THORSEN: This is an addendum to my letter of July 7 concerning the management alternatives for the Mills River drainage of the Pisgah National Forest. Since receiving the complete information from Mr. Yost of your office, I am able to complete my statement by commenting on the importance of soil type and productivity to timber management for cellulose production vs. land administration for preservation of unmanipulated ecosystems. Apparently there is a broad representation of forest types; this, combined with the diversity of soil productivities, should make the 11,000 acre City of Hendersonville municipal watershed (which I propose for inclusion in the National Wilderness Preservation System) a valuable laboratory for continuing study of unmanipulated ecosystems in comparison with the Cradle of Forestry in America and adjacent woodlots. *Citizen's wilderness proposal, entitled Otter Creek. I agree that this area should be administered for dispersed recreation with a view towards avoiding concentrated human impacts. Trails should be maintained only for protection of heavily used portions of the area where a worn pathway is unavoidable. New trails should not be constructed to satisfy imagined demands for places to walk; they only serve to minimize the number of places people go and to maximize human degradation of the area. The less the penetration per hiker per day, the more users the area will tolerate, and the greater their dispersion. The interpenetration and dispersion of soil and forest types will help to avoid localized human impacts and excessive friction between wilderness users. There appears to be no way of discerning significant differences in the timber productivity of one watershed or mountain vs. any other in this unit. Therefore, multiple-use management maximizing timber and game production in the entire area would fail to preserve significant large roadless or unmanipulated ecosystems-there would be timber sales and access roads scattered evenly throughout the area. If you are to protect the present wilderness resource in this unit you must forego timber production and artificial management of game animals in a large piece of the unit rather than in many scattered small pieces. Your alternative 4 seems to serve these requirements well. Thank you for your courtesy and for the chance to review the complete, highquality report on the Mills River unit. I was especially pleased to meet you and the able unit planning leader, G. C. Yost, at New Bern on July 12. I believe that there should be continuing public review of administrative decisions involving social policy, such as the economic, environmental and social aspects of forest uses. Professional decisions, such as timber sale design, trail location and construction, road construction, wildlife management, and so on are better reviewed by professionals once their broad impact on the land is approved by the public as the best land use. Significant changes in forest management should be publicly scrutinized; clearcutting for example, profoundly changes the utility of the forest for growth of noncommercial species, dispersed recreation, watershed, and other multiple uses. Arbitrary and abrupt changes in management direction have no place in forests which grow and evolve over scores of yearsmistakes take generations to correct. This is why I advocate Congressional action on wilderness preservation. Yours sincerely, Mr. DEL W. THORSEN, Supervisor, National Forests in North Carolina, GEORGE LANGFORD. CARY, N.C., July 21, 1972. DEAR MR. THORSEN: Thank you for inviting me to speak at your listening session on classification of wild lands; it is a rare occasion for private citizens to be allowed to contribute to the making of Forest Service policy. It is a right too often withheld, too often abused. I fear misuse of the list of attributes or criteria for classification of wild lands for which you are fishing. It may be used as a test to exclude or to eliminate areas from protected status, rather than as a description of the kinds of lands, forests and habitats which should be protected, and as a management guide. In order to gain informed public support for and belief in your program, you should list the specific areas you intend to preserve according to the degree to which they fit various criteria and to the degree to which man's intrusions are apparent. Are these intrusions visible from the air (from what altitude), on the ground (from what distance and over what area), in the soil and water (what effect on flora and fauna)? At what level do they exist and to whom are they obvious? What fraction of the study area is irreversibly and forever affected? So that a rational and fair choice can be made of the amount of land to be managed in this way, calculate the extent and dispersion of land included at each degree of man's intrusion or level of fit to your criteria. Compare this extent to the general forest zone. S. 3699 and H.R. 14392 appear to be narrowly founded on human recreational benefits; I hope that we do overlook the intent of the Wilderness Act, that (1) we must prevent the oppressive dominion of man over all land, (2) there is a need to exclude overzealous, misguided, or inadequate management and control as well as destructive exploitation-and that this must be given the force of Federal Law, (3) roads are among the worst of human intrusions because they en courage misuse of land by economic overdevelopment, lead to litter, and allow casual and unnecessary access, and (4) non-human life forms and communities need sanctuaries as much as or more than we do. You should look for representative ecosystems, not just unusual or misplaced ones (unmanipulated environments are already rare). Your list of wild lands should include places of significant size where (1) whole watersheds or groups of watersheds are represented to encourage air and water purity and relative inviolability of the ecosystem, (2) varied habitats, such as whole mountains, lakes, bogs, plains, and valleys can be protected, (3) signicant forest, soil, and climate types can eist untrammeled by man, and (4) remnants of past climates or events can survive. I will continue to advocate and you should begin to recommend wilderness designation for certain areas: those which fit within the range of lands already protected by the 1964 Wilderness Act, through separate Acts of Congress, or proposed as wilderness in the East by other federal agencies. Lands already in the National Wilderness Preservation system include the Great Gulf in New Hampshire, Linville Gorge and Shining Rock in North Carolina, and portions of Moosehorn, Monomoy Island and Great Swamps National Wildlife Refuges. Lands which are just as qualified and manageable as statutory wildernesses are listed in Senator Jackson's Omnibus Eastern Wilderness Bill (S. 3972). I would tentatively like to add parts of the Mills River planning unit in the Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina (the City of Hendersonville municipal watershed) and the headwaters of the Pemigewasset River (including Franconia Brook, the Lincoln Woods Scenic Area, and contiguous mountain land free of improved public roads) in the White Mountain Natonal Forest in New Hampshire. You must present the concept and plan of preserving wild lands in proper perspective as an indispensable part of a comprehensive land use plan, recognizing that so much more forested land is in private hands than in public control that National Forest land cannot forever provide the bulk of commercial timber. Do not subdivide management units so as to disect roadless areas, and do not attempt "full multiple use" entirely within a heretofore wild management unit, thereby destroying its integrity when it should have been shown as part of a much larger area. In short, don't whipsaw wilderness by looking at it myopically. Look ahead-to the time when you are forced to manage the general forest zone intensively (as woodlots)-and realize that there is no excuse for failing to preserve wilderness now. Liquidating today's wilderness to obtain transient gains in board feet of cut timber won't postpone for long the necessity for finding alternate products and production methods. Give our children's children some wild land to enjoy and to correct our errors in management. Yours very truly, GEORGE LANGFORD. Senator BELLMON. Our next witness is Mr Thomas Foti, Arkansas Ecology Center, Little Rock, Ark. STATEMENT OF THOMAS H. FOTI, ARKANSAS ECOLOGY CENTER, LITTLE ROCK, ARK., ALSO REPRESENTING THE JEFFERSON WILDLIFE ASSOCIATION AND THE OZARK SOCIETY Mr. FOTI. I have a very brief statement which, with your permission, I will make even briefer by not going over points which have already been pretty well beaten to death. My name is Thomas Foti. I am speaking as a member of the staff of the Arkansas Ecology Center located in Little Rock, a member of the Jefferson Wildlife Association in Pine Bluff, Chairman of the Delta Chapter of the Ozark Society in Pine Bluff, and a member of the Ozark Society, with 10 chapters located in the States of Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. Although I am representing all of these organizations today, they may each submit additional information for the record of this hearing. |