Mr. FISHER. Right now, I have about 500 head of mother cows. Senator BUMPERS. 500 mother cows on 200,000 acres?

Mr. FISHER. Yes, sir. We really concentrate on distribution. We are, like I said, we are not a land of lakes and streams. It is little seeps and windmills. Our cattle nine months out of the year will be like anywhere from three to 10 in a group, and they are disbursed throughout that range. We do concentrate our cattle in the spring to brand cows. And as I will do when I return from here in the fall, to gather and wean those cows.

Senator BUMPERS. That is an incredible thing to me. I am a former cattleman myself.

Mr. FISHER. Pay me a visit.

Senator BUMPERS. I may do that. How do you feed? Pretty well? Mr. FISHER. Sorry?

Senator BUMPERS. Do you feed well? Is your wife a good cook? Mr. FISHER. She is a darn good cook. I mean that seriously. If you could get out there, we would appreciate it. We are doing something wrong, show it to us.

Senator BUMPERS. I have a really deep sensitivity to your obvious strong feelings about this, Mr. Fisher. But let me ask you this question.

You have had those permits for 20 years, and so far as I am concerned you can have them for the next 200, you and your son and his descendants. And S. 11 states essentially that very same thing. Mr. FISHER. No, sir. I disagree with you.

Senator BUMPERS. Well, grazing rights are not impaired under the bill.

Mr. FISHER. Oh yes, sir.

Senator BUMPERS. How are they impaired?

Mr. FISHER. Well, see that is a tremendously erroneous assumption. I heard earlier today, you ask a statement when Senator Cranston was still with us, that could grazing not continue in a wilderness area. Where the misconception lays there, Mr. Chairman, again, we are a land of windmills and springs. If we cannot maintain those waters, our wildlife, our livestock, everything in the area that depends upon those waters will perish. So we cannot continue to maintain a man-made improvement within the boundaries of wilderness.

So please understand this. This is one of—I think if you could just understand that one little precious point of S. 11, you could understand a lot of what is taking place in issues such as this.

Senator BUMPERS. You would have to get permission from BLM now to do any maintenance work, construction around those springs?

Mr. FISHER. After June we do. Or was it-I think it was July. They have had a certain date set down in the California Desert Plan, something to do with this wilderness issue, that anything after a certain date that impaired the value of that wilderness, could no more go on in there. So now where we have a water that we own the water with this Section 4 permit, yes, sir, we do have to get permission right now to go into those areas.

Senator BUMPERS. How do you think that S. 11 would impair that, if you have to do that now?

Mr. FISHER. Well, see now that is the point that I would like for you to understand. If-these are WSAs now. They are wilderness study areas. We have 80 some odd of them within this S. 11 proposal. They are wilderness study areas. They are not designated wilderness. If those should be signed by Congress as being wilderness, then they will come under all criteria of wilderness. That is when we can no longer go in there, not even with the permission of BLM. If we have a windmill in there or a fence line in there for livestock management purposes, it has to be removed.

That has been what has been explained to our people. And as far as the East Mojave national scenic area going into a park, that would eliminate 10 viable ranching operations. No permit. When they are see these-under the Taylor Grazing Act established in 1934, we have, like when it is a perennial, a preference grazing permit, that right is attached to base property.

See, it is not some dandy little thing that they just say, here we will let you have you this for while you pay for it. The only way you can have that is to have it attached to base property. You understand? Okay, now, there are a 10-year renewable. So what S. 11 proposes in the park area, which would be the currently East Mojave national scenic area, is that when that man's permit comes up for renewal, they will not renew it.

It is just like Mr. Byers hit on something.

Senator BUMPERS. That is correct. He could not renew it.

Mr. FISHER. No, it is not. Okay, now would that not impair the value of his basic property that that right is attached to?

Senator BUMPERS. Yes, it would. That is the reason we have these hearings.

Mr. FISHER. And we appreciate it, sir.

Senator BUMPERS. Let me ask you. How many ranchers are there in your area?

Mr. FISHER. There are cattle ranchers; there are 18 of them in the California desert. Our sheep operators that run on ephemeral vegetation-there is another very misconceived thing by the American people, that the sheep lease is also 10-year renewable. But there are times, like seven, eight years in a row, that the sheep do not even go to the desert. There is nothing to go to. They have no perennial base. The only time they are there is when the vegetation is good. But you will hear these things that, you know, when the sheep are out there, they are stomping the tortoises or they are stomping this or that, or they are ruining the feed.

A sheep man does not pay transport on a band of sheep to go 200 miles and get his camp out there and there is herders out there, and there is water trucks out there. If there is not an abundance of ephemeral vegetation, he does not go.

Senator BUMPERS. Mr. Byers, how did Santa Fe, did they acquire this land by purchase, or is this a part of the land grants prior to the turn of the century?

Mr. BYERS. This is part of the original Southern Pacific grant and we have merged with them. And we now, through Santa Fe Pacific Realty Corporation, manage those grant lands.

Senator BUMPERS. Those are all those checkerboard sections that were granted to build railroads and so on. Is that what it is? Mr. BYERS. That is correct.

Senator BUMPERS. Why, if you have 134,000 acres there of high potential, and you have had that land for all these many years, why has no development occurred before now?

Mr. BYERS. One of the reasons is that Santa Fe and Southern Pacific only merged in 1983. We have existed, our company

Senator BUMPERS. Who owned the land? Santa Fe owned it before that?

Mr. BYERS. Southern Pacific owned it until that time. Santa Fe Pacific Minerals has really existed as a mining company since about 1976, when a management decision was made to develop a mining company. And now our company mines coal in New Mexico, industrial minerals in five states, and silver and gold in Nevada. We have taken the advice of Senator Cranston in 1976 when he introduced S. 2071 to start coming to us, look at your lands and what can we do to make some arrangements out here. And with the amount of lands in the desert, there are about 1.5 million acres that we own, you just cannot go out overnight, Mr. Chairman, and make a very honest and accurate assessment of that.

We have tried to do our best in a short amount of time, in three years. And this is what we have come up with. Senator Cranston's staff now has this map as does Chairman Vento's staff.

Senator BUMPERS. Do you think it is possible to affect an exchange for that 134,000 acres?

Mr. BYERS. We would like very much not to exchange the 134,000 acres that we have identified with high mineral potential that are in the park and wilderness areas. The future of Santa Fe Pacific Minerals Corporation is mining. And as you have heard before, you are talking about an area of this planet earth, which is just a very unique resource. We are lucky we have got it in the United States. There are a wide variety of mineral commodities there. The lands I have identified in orange here, just are not gold or silver. We have tungsten, we have clays, we have borates, we have salt, we have industrial minerals, sand and gravel and aggregates.

Senator BUMPERS. Does Santa Fe Mineral have any claims on federal lands?

Mr. BYERS. Yes, we do, sir.

Senator BUMPERS. Do you know how many acres?

Mr. BYERS. No, I do not. We do have claims on federal lands in Arizona, some in California.

Senator BUMPERS. Claims on these areas in between the checkerboard areas here?

Mr. BYERS. I do not believe any are in this area. This map, however, does identify the fact that other companies do have claims on those intervening federal lands.

Senator BUMPERS. Though oftentimes if you were going to start developing that you would have to go into a consortium with somebody else. Would you not? In other words, it might not be economical just on your land. You would have to get some other lands with

it?

Mr. BYERS. That is correct. But on the other hand, another company, which would have staked land, federal land adjoining ours, would come to us. And that is what placing those high potential lands in wilderness or park is going to do to us. It is going to make

possible for us to lease them to others. It will make it impossible down the road for us to lease them to Mr. Fisher, for him and his colleagues to graze them. It will just take that revenue out of our company, long-term revenue.

Senator BUMPERS. Gentlemen, thank you again, for your testimony, and for coming. We may very well submit some questions in writing to some of the members of the panel. And we would hope and be grateful if you would promptly respond to any questions that are submitted to you by the subcommittee.

I thank all of you again for your work and your travel for being here with us today. We stand in recess subject to the call of the chair.

[Whereupon, at 5:50 p.m., the subcommittee adjourned.]

[Due to the voluminous nature of the materials submitted, additional documents and statements have been retained in subcommittee files.]

APPENDIXES

APPENDIX I

Responses to Additional Questions

Committee note.-Responses to the following questions sent to the Bureau of Land Management had not been received by the Subcommittee at the time of the printing of the hearing. When the responses are received, they will be retained in Subcommittee files.

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