and are submitted by Members of the Senate for inclusion. Without objection, the staff will include them in the hearing transcripts. We have several hundred letters from individuals, couples, and frequently a group of people as individuals which will not be printed, but will be on file at the committee offices for members to inspect. They will be available when this measure is considered in executive session. Without objection, the statements, telegrams and communications for inclusion will appear in the record at the close of this session. If there is nothing else to come before the committee, the hearing is adjourned. Whereupon, at 3:35 p.m., the committee adjourned, subject to the call of the Chair. (Additional statements and documents admitted to the record under authority granted during its hearings follow :) Senator CLINTON P. ANDERSON, Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C.: REDLANDS, CALIF., February 27, 1963. The Grayback Council, Boy Scouts of America, by unanimous vote wishes to express our support of the wilderness bill S. 4 and opposition to any amendments which would exclude the San Gorgonio area from its protection. We strongly urge you to reserve this wilderness area for our Scouts and citizens use. Hon. CLINTON P. ANDERSON, JAMES LEE CLARK, Council President. ADIRONDACK MOUNTAIN CLUB, INC., Chairman, Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, DEAR SENATOR ANDERSON: On several previous occasions, the Adirondack Mountain Club has supported the passage of the Wilderness Act, S. 174, which was passed by the Senate in 1961 but failed of passage in the House of Representatives in 1962. We note that a new wilderness bill, S. 4, identical to that passed by the Senate in 1961, has been introduced. We regard this measure as having the greatest importance to the public good and hope that your committee will report it out favorably. The Adirondack Mountain Club is composed of some 2,500 members residing in nearly every county of New York State and in neighboring States. The club has been vitally interested in wilderness protection, both within New York State and nationally, ever since it was founded in 1922. Many of our members have had an opportunity to enjoy wilderness experiences in various national parks and national forests and to understand the importance of our wilderness system to the people of the country. We believe that establishment of a National Wilderness Preservation System and policy as provided by the wilderness bill is absolutely essential, if present and future needs of the people of the United States for wilderness recreation and experience are to have any possibility of attainment. Respectfully yours, DAVID L. NEWHOUSE, Chairman, Conservation Committee. STATEMENT OF WILLIAM I. POWELL, ATTORNEY, INDEPENDENT PETROLEUM ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA My name is William I. Powell, and I am attorney for the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA). The Independent Petroleum Association of America is a national trade association of some 6,000 independent producers of crude oil and natural gas, including land and royalty owners with membership in every oil-producing area in the United States. The primary interest of the members of the association is the production of oil and gas within the borders of the United States. The very substantial development of the resources of the public lands States is persuasive evidence of the wisdom of the historical policy of Congress in advocating the multiple-use concept. Based upon this experience, we wish to urge that any violation of this historical policy through withdrawals of large acreages for special single-purpose use should be permitted only as an exception to the general multiple-use policy. Further, that an exception only be permitted where it can be clearly shown that such single purpose use is (1) essential, and (2) incompatible with other uses. We feel that, if it be deemed appropriate for any withdrawal for a singlepurpose use, such action should only be taken after a careful land-use study, including public hearings and that any such withdrawal of substantial acreages be accomplished only through affirmative action of Congress. Experience of the petroleum industry has demonstrated that its operations can be made compatible with other activities within the multiple-use concept. Oil and gas operations have been conducted on the public domain, under proper governmental regulation, without being in conflict with recreational, wildlife, or other multiple-use goals. Over the years, oil and gas operations have been carried on in harmony with the farmer, rancher, national forest service, private estates, city and county municipalities and many, many other owners of the property being drilled. In our opinion, if this legislation should become law, it would deal a serious blow to the multiple-use policy which has worked so well over the years in the development of our national land reserve, and would retard development of oil and gas operations in the various public land States. The development of the large acreages in the United States under the jurisdiction of the Federal Government and finding of large reserves on these lands has proven to be in the overall interest of all its citizens from the standpoint of peacetime economic growth and also national defense. The large areas in the national forest and national park lands involved in S. 4 contain acreages potentially productive of oil and gas. For example, the South Absaroka National Forest east of Yellowstone in an area covered by non-petroleum-bearing igneous rock overlaying sedimentary formations which are potentially petroleum bearing. There has been considerable interest in this area on the part of the petroleum industry in recent years. Despite the fact, however, that the national forest and national park lands involved in this bill are not at present of general interest to petroleum prospectors, we believe the procedure of wholesale withdrawal from multiple use as provided in S. 4 is inadvisable because it would not follow what appears to us to be the more appropriate procedures as outlined above. As to wildlife refuge and game rangelands, we believe it would be extremely inadvisable to bar them from multiple-use development, including petroleum exploration and development, as proposed in S. 4. It is known that much of these lands contain geological structures favorable to the existence of petroleum and considerable acreage within the game rangelands are now actively being explored today; and in some instances, production is being obtained. In conclusion, we recommend that this legislation be amended as follows: (1) Set forth in the preamble that a wilderness system can be adequately and effectively established in harmony with multiple-use development. (2) Wilderness areas can only be created by affirmative congressional action. (3) Wildlife refuges and game ranges be eliminated from the bill. Senator CLINTON ANDERSON, SOUTH BETHLEHEM, N.Y., February 27, 1963. Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C.: By resolution of the Eastern New York Chapter of Nature Conservancy whose members are dedicated to the preservation of natural areas of scientific and esthetic worth, I urge your committee take favorable and expeditious action on the wilderness bill, S. 4, so worded as to conform as nearly as may be to the Senate version of the last session. Americans want assurances that their official custodians of public tracts will not betray, by inadvertence or under pressure, the wilderness value so desperately needed by a society under increasing physical pressure and unbearable tension. ROBERT RIENOW, Chairman Hon. CLINTON P. ANDERSON, DULUTH, MINN., February 25, 1963. Chairman, Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, DEAR SENATOR ANDERSON: Friends of the Wilderness, a nationwide organization of which the undersigned, of Duluth, Minn., is the nonsalaried secretary, and which was organized to come to the rescue of our unique and incomparable wilderness canoe country of the Superior National Forest in northern Minnesota, when it was threatened with destruction by commercial use in 1949, asks respectfully that the following brief statement be made a part of the testimony at the hearing on the wilderness bill, S. 4, now before your committee, and that it be included in the record. Our detailed viewpoint on this vital bill to provide statutory protection of our priceless wilderness areas was presented before the previous Congress, and will be found in the printed record of both the Senate and the House. At this time we wish only to restate very briefly, but with all possible emphasis at our command, our very urgent conviction that our wilderness areas require the statutory protection of the Congress and that without it our best and most accessible wilderness areas are doomed as surely as if the Congress massed specific reverse legislation to put them on the market for sale to the highest bidder. We have perhaps the most accessible and exceptionally large public wildernes in our country; our wilderness canoe area in the Superior Forest of Minnesota is the outstanding example of what tremendous and unremitting pressures for exploitation are brought against such an area. We have had to fight almost constantly for more than a generation, ofttimes desperately with our backs to the wall, in order to save this unique canoe wilderness with its many-sided, exceptional natural values. And we have succeeded only because the Congress, beginning far back in July 1930, and several times since, has come to our aid; and because the Federal courts have always upheld the simple justice of our cause; and because the people of this Nation, and of our State, have been overwhelmingly behind us. Many of us have grown old and gray in the struggle to preserve this single wilderness, and still the attacks come. We can say to you, out of our own sad experience, that no choice public wilderness area can be regarded as safe, can be regarded as safely preserved for our future generations, unless you give these choice wildernesses your explicit protection. There is no strong reason why they should not have this statutory protection, in addition to the administrative authorization they now have. There is every good reason why they should have it. The savage and often distorted and vindictive attacks on the wilderness bill in the House of Representatives at the last session foreshadow what these wilderness areas may confidently expect in the future if they do not get the specific protection of the Congress now. Many of them will be destroyed. Gentlemen, we must not let that happen, we cannot let that happen. Our country, without the slightest question, needs these natural areas. They must be preserved. They must be preserved now. As our experience in our own wilderness canoe country has demonstrated, tomorrow will be too late. We never can restore a wilderness, once it is gone. Thanking you, and the members of your committee, for this privilege of being heard. May the wilderness canoe country live unspoiled forever and forever. WILLIAM H. MAGIE, Executive Secretary. STATEMENT OF MAURICE LEON, JR., STORY, WYO. WILDERNESS PRESERVATION AND USE The current boom in 50-mile hikes, the celebrated marathons that are taking place everywhere in the country, illustrates two points: Americans are still game for new ideas and a good many of them may be getting tired of sedentary lives and accumulating fat. It has not always been quite this way. Indeed, until the Kennedy administration's incumbency and interest in physical hardihood as a beneficial factor in national life, walking was the purview of such elders as President Truman and Dr. White. That a craze for walking has swept the country from end to end can be viewed as a fad of the same category as the famous dance marathons of the twenties: more propertly, I believe, it is evidence of a certain restlessness within many of us who are not at ease amid the growing subordination of nature by material culture. Not very long ago the statement that the people of this country might take to hiking as part of a larger recreational plan would have been greeted as a silly notion. In the fall of 1960 this writer raised the idea at a regional meeting on land resources as the central concept of a plea for wilderness preservation. Reception was chilly. At that time wilderness preservation itself was considered a silly notion in certain quarters; there were those who could not imagine that there might be national benefit in giving the remnants of primordial America a lasting reprieve from exploitation. To those who were persuaded that the move for wilderness preservation was a plot to swindle Americans out of their birthright it could only seem that the evil was being transmogrified by the suggestion that a hiking program might be one means of giving wilderness areas a greater role to play in national life (while at the same time providing a firmer base for its preservation by giving more people a means of using it consistent with its integrity and permanence). It was, then, premature to suggest in 1960 that the two concepts of wilderness preservation and a national hiking program might have an affinity. Today, perhaps, the suggestion may seem more to the point. Essentially, it seeks to come to grips with a formidable circumstance: current wilderness use, which involves extensive grazing by pack and saddle horses, has pushed many a wilderness area to the outer limits of its capacity to support such grazing. Those who believe that America's wilderness areas are so extensive as to be in no present danger of running into short supply may find it hard to believe that in many areas a crisis of space and resources already exists. Yet it is so, beyond doubt, and signs point ominously to the intensification of the problem with each passing year. It is not suggested here that current use of saddle and pack horses by hunters and other wilderness users be curtailed. It is being suggested here that wilderness use is rapidly approaching a ceiling over the numbers who travel through it by traditional means, that if it is ever to have a broad rather than an esoteric meaning in national life, if, indeed, it is to be preserved, new ways will have to be devised to bring people to it. For wilderness preservation is as viable a concept as there are numbers that value it. Its significance in human affairs, and the understanding of its potential benefits, derive from familiarity with it. Anything which encourages more people to use it in ways which leave it unviolated aids both the preservation concept and the users. Heretofore wilderness use has been limited to the reasonably affluent who can afford guides with horses and equipment, or to those in its proximity. Also, to the uninitiated the wilderness seems to raise formidable barriers, barriers which are more of the imagination than of fact. Nonetheless, despite obstacles wilderness areas which are managed as such by the Park and Forest Services get in most cases an intensive amount of use during summer and fall (there are, on the other hand, a few areas which get almost no use at all). It is reasonable to assume that use would increase markedly if certain encouragements were given. A generation ago those who had pioneered skiing in this country foresaw clearly that it would soon become a national sport and planned accordingly. Their foresight is being harvested today. Today we can be certain that sooner or later vast numbers of Americans will turn their attention to wilderness preserves as they have already to ski slopes, lakes, and ocean littorals. Το prepare the way for them, and to protect wilderness from last-minute programs that might lead to improper development the various services in whose hands wilderness management lies must be prompted to develop a plan for more extensive use. Now. The first problem a plan for more extensive use must cope with is this: If horse transportation is now approaching its limits for lack of grazing resources in the mountainous wilderness areas (and most are mountainous) what is possible and practical as a substitute? Mechanical means of transport are, per se, inimical to wilderness. Aside from horseback, then, there is only one way to travel the wilderness and that, in that plain but durable phrase, is by shank's mare. Having traveled on foot through some of America's more remote wilderness, carrying all food and equipment, this writer has become convinced that there are no obstacles save psychological ones to the development of wilderness areas as national hiking grounds in addition to their present uses. Some are by nature for the novice, others for the expert, but all are within reach of all but the handicapped or professionally lazy. What is required is no more than initial interest and momentum among those Americans who are potential or actual outdoorsmen, plus a cadre of trained personnel to patrol wilderness entrances and interiors for security reasons, and food dumps to make it possible for both fledgling and veteran hikers to venture into the wilderness without heavy packs if they so wish. If thousands of Americans can be stimulated into 50-mile walks to nowhere, sheer feats of time and distance, surely far more can be interested in in the far broader experience of wilderness travel on foot in which reacquaintance with habitat, not muscular endurance, is the chief purpose. In judging the feasibility of such a plan it is well to keep in mind that most wilderness areas are far from being vast, scattered as they are and often chopped into pieces. The hiker venturing into them is hardly submitting himself to the ultimate trial. Neither an unobtrusive administrative personnel nor food caches, nor even shelter huts, are inconsistent with wilderness character and preservation. Wilderness preservation is an art as well as a science and managed by those who know and respect it it can be used by far larger numbers than use it now, in perfect safety from defilement. Indeed, the more who enjoy it the more sponsors and security it will have. If the assumptions of this paper are correct, wilderness preservation and wilderness use are functions of each other. Greater use will eventually require of the user the willingness to consider hiking as his means of transportation into, through, and out of the wilderness. Under proper circumstances the prospect can be inviting rather than formidable. It is those circumstances which now require our thoughtful attention. As for wilderness itself, many reasons for its preservation have been advanced by those familiar with it, most of them good and some of them compelling. Yet for those who believe in wilderness preservation moments come when they find it difficult to meet the objections of skeptics, particularly those skeptics who hugely exaggerate the extent of the material bounty contained in wilderness areas and have all too rudimentary a sense of its intangibles. Today as always exploitive-mindedness is not so much a derivation from native greed as from a failure to develop along those lines which lead to thought for consequences. Much of the opposition to wilderness preservation comes from sources traditionally associated with maximum use and minimum precautions where the Nation's resources are involved. Esthetics, scientific reflection, and sheer joy in what is the natural order, do not thrive in an atmosphere in which material gain is the sole preoccupation. What does it say about us as a people if we allow ourselves to be so fatally limited? Those who are familiar with the wilderness have both an individual and a community of experience from it. It is this variety and commonality of experience that are essential to a free and developing people. This is a point which has been overlooked far too often in discussions of the substance of a free society. We talk endlessly about the communal duty when we are not expounding the individual prerogative, as if the individual's destiny were somehow separate from the milieu. They are not separate but reflections of each other, or should be. It is important to us that we add to rather than eliminate from the number of opportunities in which we can grow as persons while sharing a revelation of our unexceptionality. There are rare circumstances in which this is possible and the wilderness is one of them. This argues not only for wilderness preservation but for far wider acquaintance with it. The case for wilderness preservation depends less upon words than deeds. Abstractions will not do the job. It will be men, women, and children actually in the wilderness who will make the case for it through their presence there, their enjoyment of it, and their desire to return to it as it is. There is nothing intrinsic in wilderness that makes it valuable to us, any more than there is anything intrinsic in gold that makes it precious. Value is in the eye of the beholder. It is our attitude toward the wilderness which infuses it with meaning (or, for lack of attitude, leaves it unendowed with any significance save that of material profits). Like the wine taster's palate, our appreciation for wilderness requires education. To hike in the wilderness is not merely to walk but to live in a certain way that involves dimensions unknown to us in our normal routine. Perhaps it can be argued that we are not impaired by what we are not aware of lacking. So complacent an argument leads the way to a catastrophic national insensitivity. As a demarche, we may ask if we are destined as persons and a nation for far less than full potential stature if our experience is to be com |