that recommendations for changes in the wilderness areas, within certain limits, would be made by the President, upon the advice of the Secretary of the Interior or the Secretary of Agriculture, and such changes would become law unless Congress voted against such changes, This actually amounts to Congress exercising only a veto power instead of the power it has to initiate and pass legislation.

Sokmen would like to have the language on grazing retained in S. 174 as passed by the Senate. The bill states that grazing of livestok "shall" continue where it is already established. The Senate, in retaining this clause, recognized that grass was a renewable natural resource that could only be harvested by livestock grazing,

We believe that a wilderness law should contain a provision that State and local governments be given the right to approve or disapprove the withdrawal of all such lands in their respective areas. And, that any withdrawals of 5,000 acres or more for wilderness areas should have congressional approval as do those withdrawals of public lands for military use.

SUMMARY

Cattlemen feel that wilderness legislation is unnecessary because Government agencies are already administering and maintaining adequate wilderness type areas. Today, such areas in our national forest ajore occupy a land area equal to three of our New England States.

Stockmen favor the administration of our public lands on the basis of multiple use sharing these lands for uses such as grazing, mining, tilering, water conservation, and recreation. Proposed wilderness b's strike at the very core of the multiple use concept.

Proponents of wilderness legislation should tell the people the facts about such legislation because it is designed for the enjoyment of the few rather than for the majority.

Population growth calls for a fluid management policy of our western public lands rather than a restrictive one as reflected by the provisions of the several bills on wilderness areas. Passage of wilderTess legislation would lock up our publie lands and cripple the econote and social development of the West.

The problem facing our State is to find adequate mass recreational fate for the family on holiday and weekend outings. Our public lands will of necessity have to play a major role in developing and providing such recreational facilities,

Sold the Congress approve legislation for wilderness areas, it s'ou'd retain the power to make any changes in the status of wilder

Tess areas,

CONCLUSION

We wish to express our appreciation of the opportunity to appear before your committee on the subject of wilderness legislation. Tark you.

Mrs. Prost. Thank you very, much Mr. Van Vleck.

Are there questions!

If not, our next witness is Mr. Thomas N. Walthier, district geologst, Bear Creek Mining Co., 2001 North First Avenue, Tucson, Ariz. Ard will Mr. Howard R. Leach please come forward.

You may proceed, Mr. Walthier.

STATEMENT OF THOMAS N. WALTHIER, DISTRICT GEOLOGIST, SOUTHWEST DISTRICT, BEAR CREEK MINING CO., TUCSON, ARIZ.

Mr. WALTHIER. Madam Chairman, and distinguished members of the committee, my name is Thomas N. Walthier; I reside at Tucson, Ariz., the location of the southwestern district office of Bear Creek Mining Co.

Like hundreds of other professional economic geologists in the Southwest, the technical men on my staff are engaged in searching out areas which have potential for new mineral deposits and in testing those areas by those methods currently available to us.

In the short time allotted to me, I will try to express the viewpoint of those of us who are trained and experienced in evaluating land from the standpoint of its mineral resources. We feel that the provisions of S. 174 are not nearly adequate to insure that valuable public assets contained in the subsurface of the lands in question will not be wantonly wasted.

These provisions are that we can prospect, using only methods compatible with the wilderness environment, and then, if successful, try to obtain permission from the President to develop the resources discovered. These may have been meant to be a reasonable replacement for our current rights under the public land and mining laws, but they do not do the job.

Instead, they will effectively bar any further exploration effort. Realistically, the bulk of prospecting today is being done by the mining companies, with teams of geologists, geochemists, and geophysicists. In inaccessible country, efficient access is likely to be by helicopter. Modern geophysical methods include surveys with either fixed-wing or helicopter-borne instruments while many ground geophysical methods involve the use of electric generators.

Successful exploration leads to drilling naturally requiring motorized drills. Incidentally, lightweight drills are available which can be flown to the job by helicopter obviating the need for a road. None of these necessary modern exploration procedures leave any permanent mark on the land, but they would be prevented by the proposed provisions forbidding helicopter landings and the use of motorized equipment.

Practical recognition of the need to use whatever is required to avoid waste of the mineral resources is just as important as the bill's provisions which permit the Forest Service to fight fires or pests which are wasting the surface resources.

The other mining clause in the proposed bill substitutes for our present rights the permission to go to the President as a supplicant for a license to develop any deposits discovered. We are asked to spend our money first, then hope to be given some kind of a permit but please note that there is no guarantee that the company discovering the resource would be the one granted permission to develop it. It is easy to see that this is not a very attractive business proposition. In summary, the practical effect of the proposed bill will be to stop further exploration and development of the mineral resources of these public lands.

Having said that the proposed bill is unworkable, I would like to go on to my principal point. That is that the lands in question are

without question potential mineral-producing ground. It must be recognized that in considering locking up all the possible mineral resources of vast acreages, one must take into account not only the ferrous metals, base metals, and precious metals, but all the many industrial minerals and rocks, chemical raw materials, coal, and oil and gas.

To evaluate any one of the big areas in question requires that a team of trained geologists, geochemists, and a geophysical staff study that area with respect to each of perhaps a hundred commodities. Sweeping statements about the total mineral resources of such huge blocks of land must be so generalized as to be meaningless in practice. In our society a private group, the mining industry, is the segment which has as its duty the supplying the economy with necessary mineral raw materials. As a result, we are the group who, because of professional training and experience, have long concerned ourselves with the mineral assets of public lands and have specialized knowledge of the complexities of geologic and economic factors involved in any attempt at evaluation of mineral potential.

As we see it, we also have a duty to inform the citizenry when a public issue arises which requires our specialized knowledge for a complete understanding. In this wilderness issue we do not feel that the public has been clearly informed that most, if not all, of the land units involved are definitely good prospecting ground, and that no surveys or evaluations have yet been made to determine what mineral values do exist. There is good reason for this situation in the fact that the job has been provided for by leaving the land open to entry by private mining industry. This, of course, is a monumental task requiring armies of professional people and vast fortunes in money and considerable time.

It is unfortunate, however, that the public lands have not been evaluated for their contained mineral values, since it is very possible that the highest values present in portions of these lands are in mineral deposits of critical importance to the Nation. In our view, the public is the beneficiary of a trust, and has a right to insist that not one but all values which exist in his property shall accrue to him.

In these few minutes I believe I can explain our position best by referring to a few maps. These maps, published by State agencies, show the broad general geologic features of the land, in these cases, the States of California and Arizona. Overlain on these maps, the acetate sheets contain symbols prepared from published State data showing the character and location of the major known metallic mineral occurrences of certain types, and last, the units which have been proposed for wilderness withdrawal.

It should be realized that the commodities covered are only a few of the hundred commodities in common use. If we were to try to show known occurrences of the industrial minerals and rocks and chemical raw materials, such as cement rock, abrasives, talc, borates, ceramic clays, and scores of others, there would be room for nothing else on these sheets.

A general glance at these maps shows the widespread occurrence of valuable minerals in these States. It also shows that many of the wilderness units already are known to contain deposits of various sorts. Closer inspection of these maps will show that the general

geologic formations which underlies each of these units are frequently identical with those present in adjoining more accessible areas which are known to contain valuable deposits.

There are 27 wilderness units in California, and 17 in Arizona, totaling over 9 million acres or 14,000 square miles. To the professional geologist there are 44 areas each of which has to be carefully evaluated for each of the 100 and more separate mineral commodities now used. Anyone attempting an evaluation of these lands must also anticipate which of the 86 naturally occurring elements and hundreds of minerals not used today may prove to be in great demand in the future, just as uranium, beryllium, germanium, lithium and others have come to be critical in recent years.

In summary, the value of each of the many uses including conservation, mineral, and recreation, to which these public lands could be put is simply and unfortunately not known. Evaluation of subsurface resources is complex; too much so to be resolved at one time for all time. It appears to me that we as yet have no measure of the demand for pure wilderness in terms of how many people need how many units of what size in what areas in exactly how undeveloped a condition.

Certain prudence would dictate that attempts, however meager, to answer these and similar questions should be considered each time a single-purpose land withdrawal from the public domain is proposed. This should, I feel, be a continuing process by which each individual single-purpose land withdrawal is reviewed and evaluated against the standard of multiple use.

The Forest and Park Services have preserved these areas to date, despite most of them being open to entry under the public land and mining laws and also being subject to the pressure by the general public for recreational development. We believe they should remain open still, so that the public is not deprived of either the mineral or recreational resources which belong to it.

Listed below are the proposed wilderness areas in the southwestern United States with notes on the geology and contained mineral deposits. Although Bear Creek Mining Co. is not now exploring in the State of California I have included the proposed withdrawals in this tabulation to be complete.

Some of the proposed wilderness areas show few if any mineral occurrences. This can frequently be attributed to a veneer of nonmineral volcanic rocks concealing the older rocks below that may carry minerals. To prospect such areas is more difficult, requires more money, and is more speculative than prospecting areas where there is no such veneer and so prospecting tends to be postponed.

The lack of prospects and exploration does not necessarily mean the absence of economic minerals, but does indicate the lesser concentration of exploration effort there to date. The concealed rocks may be just as well mineralized as those in the larger mining districts. Most of the proposed areas under discussion are known to carry minerals of commercial value and it is reasonable to predict that if prospecting and exploration be allowed to continue additional valuable deposits will be discovered.

I wish to thank the committee for this opportunity to present my views.

Mrs. Prost. Thank you. Without objection, the "Brief Description of Geology and Mineral Occurrences in Proposed Wilderness

Areas" appended to your statement will be made a part of the record at this point.

(The document follows:)

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF GEOLOGY AND MINERAL OCCURRENCES, PROPOSED WILDERNESS AREAS

MOUNT BALDY PRIMITIVE AREA, APACHE NATIONAL FOREST, APACHE COUNTY, ARIZ,

Area consists of Quaternary basalts, tuffs, and agglomerates. Economic mineral deposits, should they exist, would lie concealed beneath these young volcanic rocks.

SIERRA ANCHA WILD AREA

An area composed of pre-Cambrian and Paleozoic sediments with younger diabase intrusive into them. There are also scattered patches of pre-Cambrian and related crystalline intrusive rocks. Tungsten has been produced in the northern portion and numerous uranium occurrences are recorded throughout the area. Asbestos has been found at numerous places and several mines have been productive. This part of Arizona is the only place in the United States where chrysotile-asbestos of strategic quality is known.

CHIRICAHUA WILD AREA, CORONADO

NATIONAL FOREST, COCHISE COUNTY, ARIZ.

The area is largely concealed beneath a Tertiary rhyolite lava flow but Cretaceous shales, sandstones, and limestones crop out on the northeast and southwest. On the west flank is a large patch of Tertiary granite and related crystalline intrusive rocks. Copper, molybdenum, gold, silver, lead and zinc deposits occur in pre-Tertiary rocks at several places in the Chiricahua Mountains near the proposed withdrawal area.

SYCAMORE CANYON PRIMITIVE AREA, COCONINO NATIONAL FOREST, YAVAPAI AND COCONINO COUNTIES, ARIZ.

Sycamore Canyon is deeply incised into the flat lying and relatively undisturbed Paleozoic sediments and Quaternary basalts of the Mogollon Mesa. There has been little mining activity past or present in or near this area, however, only 10 miles to the south lies the great Jerome district containing the United Verde and United Verde Extension Copper Mines. The pre-Cambrian rocks, in which these mines occur, underlie Sycamore Canyon area.

BLUE RANGE PRIMITIVE AREA, APACHE NATIONAL FOREST, GREENLEE COUNTY, ARIZ.

This area is overlain primarily by Quaternary basalt lava. On the south, a large area of Tertiary rhyolite cover replaces the basalt. The rhyolite is also present on Red Mountain on the northwest and on an unnamed mountain to the northeast. These volcanic units are overlapped by Quaternary silts, sands, and gravels. Prospects containing small occurrences of disseminated pyrite and oxidized copper minerals are known to occur in outcrops along the Blue River. Rhyolite of this same age and appearance is known to be gold and copper bearing in adjacent areas near Morenci, Duncan, Steins Pass, and the Galiuro Mountains. KOFA NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, CASTLE DOME MOUNTAINS, KOFA MOUNTAINS, SOUTH END NEW WATER MOUNTAINS, YUMA COUNTY, ARIZ.

The Kofa and Castle Dome Mountains, the main ranges of this refuge, are largely lava flows with lesser areas of schist, granite, and sedimentary rocks. Mineral production exceeds $5 million principally from gold, silver, lead, and copper. Much of the gold has been from placers, the rest of the metals have come from veins. There are several known areas of altered granite containing disseminated copper, a not unfavorable clue to additional copper occurrences. Complex gold-silver-manganese mineral assemblages, notable among these the Sheep Tank Mine on the west edge of the unit, have attracted attention to try and solve the difficult metallurgical problems. The lava flows conceal premineral rocks which elsewhere contain the metallic minerals mentioned above.