STATEMENT OF MRS. FERN HALL, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF., REPRESENTING THE CALIFORNIA ALPINE CLUB Mrs. HALL. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, my name is Fern Hall. I reside at 424 Jones Street, San Francisco. As past president and chairman of the conservation committee, I represent the California Alpine Club, a group of over 500 members. The club, one of the oldest in the bay area, was founded in 1913 with a purpose to enjoy, explore, and render accessible the out of doors. Members are, for the most part, business people whom you will not find in public campgrounds but in wilderness areas. The club's two lodges, one on Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, the other at Echo Summit near Desolation Valley Wilderness Area, bring several thousand people a year to the out of doors. Club activities, besides hiking and educational programs, sponsor trips into the high country of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. We are here today to show why we need the wilderness bill. Let us reflect a moment on what California will be like in the year 2000 A.D.-just 39 short years from now. Edward Dolder, deputy director of the California Department of Natural Resources, told us at the Federation of Western Out-DoorClubs' Labor Day convention that California will have 60 million people with solid, coastal metropolises. Los Angeles will extend to Santa Barbara and Antelope Valley. Housing will be wall to wall and many storied. Land will be too valuable for gardens. Schoolchildren will be taken to see things growing. Remaining land areas will be given priority for agriculture. People will work only 4 days a week and free time will become a problem. Recreational areas are rationed. You can't buy a 2 by 4, but plastic will be used instead. Today Forest Service and private tree farms are doing a wonderful work-planting hundreds of trees in a day. In 1960 California Forest Service planted 15,000 acres with 8 million seedlings. A steady supply of lumber should be maintained through improved methods of planting and sanitation and through more complete usage of the entire tree. However, if this does not prove to be true, there will be no need to massacre our wilderness forests since our ingenious chemists will miracularize a substitute. Our opponents of the mining industries, the wilderness bill does not deprive you of areas you are prospecting now. Many of the areas will be too inaccessible and too costly for you to mine. Most important nuclear power will bring about deeper mining processes which will supply new stores of minerals. With great new sources of minerals and even some substitutes you can leave areas of wilderness inviolate. Conservationists are interested in protecting the economic development and national security of their country as much as are the mining and the lumbering industries. Conservationists give of their time, money, and energy for everyone, for all time, and with no dollar signs attached. Man still has the nostalgia of the past. He lives the "Westerns" on television, and decorates his fireplace with squirrel rifles and his garden with wagon wheels. Sigurd Olson is so very right when he says, "The song of the wilderness within us is still powerful and strong." I would like to say that on TV last night I happened to stumble on a program which was called "A Way of Living." And to me it really answered our questions here about this wilderness bill. The person showed pictures of ancient Greece and the country, and, as you know, you see all of these ruins. Then he went on to say that in every case where this was found it was the result of war. I thought to myself, "Well, of course." But what he went on to say further is what really amazed me, that because these countries had allowed their natural resources, their forests, to be cut down, their water supplies were gone, and their mineral resources were gone, which was the reason we saw all of the remains. The wilderness bill must be passed and without crippling amend ments. Thank you. Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you. Are there questions? If not, Mr. Bill Hawkins, Pacific Union College is next. STATEMENT OF BILL HAWKINS, PACIFIC UNION COLLEGE Mr. HAWKINS. Honorable Members of Congress, ladies, and gentlemen, I am Bill Hawkins, a senior pre-med student at Pacific Union College. I am attending this hearing with Prof. Lloyd Eighme, professor of biology, and also with nine other members of the biological conservation class. We are definitely in favor of the wilderness bill, S. 174. I would like to mention three ways it would be beneficial: 1. Further our understanding of ecological principles. 2. Outstanding opportunities for geological, scientific, and historical value. 3. Opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation. The comparatively small amount of economic resources found in one-fiftieth of our land area which could be set off as wilderness areas, is not essential to the present economy of our Nation. S. 174 will actually protect these areas from unwise exploitation in the near future and will bring about better use of resources outside of the wilder ness areas. S. 174 does provide for multiple use of our whole Nation by providing a token portion for esthetic enjoyment and recreation. S. 174 would give the whole people a chance to speak through their Congress regarding the use of this resource. This hearing is a good example. This wilderness bill, S. 174, is absolutely necessary now. I urge you to take favorable action on this bill. Thank you. Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. JOHNSON. The gentleman from Alaska. Mr. JOHNSON. Off the record. (Discussion off the record.) Mr. HAWKINS. Mr. Chairman, may I add one paragraph that expresses the attitude of several students of Pacific Union College? Mr. JOHNSON. Without objection we will place that in the record at this point. (The statement follows:) PACIFIC UNION COLLEGE, I am the Voice of the Wilderness crying: "Save me, save me, save me." It seems that there is an echo of a voice in the wilderness crying: "Destroy me, destroy me. Use me for gain and leave me a dump of mine tailings and stump." Must I, the Voice of the Wilderness be submerged under the baptizing cries for financial gain? I admit I am a new frontier, but must this admission mean my own destruction? The voice of many a wilderness has been silenced. My voice is growing weaker. Soon all that will be heard is a lonely echo of the Voice in the Wilderness crying, crying, for he will have lost his identity as the Voice in the Wilderness. There will be no wilderness left for him to cry in. Geo. Schumacker, Mel Hayashi, F????? Jones, Galen R. Wedin, (COMMITTEE NOTE: Signatures of several students were illegible.) Mr. JOHNSON. Our next witness is Mrs. Madeline M. Sheridan, of Sacramento; then Mrs. DelMar Janson; then Robert Marshall, of Pomona, Calif. You may proceed, Mrs. Sheridan. STATEMENT OF MRS. MADELINE M. SHERIDAN, SACRAMENTO, CALIF. Mrs. SHERIDAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee, my name is Madeline M. Sheridan and I live at 3540 J Street, Sacramento, Calif. I am a retired public employee and one who has been interested in conservation for many years, and whose employers' interests come first, and who were not able to get time off to appear here today, for which I imagine you are rather grateful according to the length of your list. I appear in support of S. 174 and urge prompt and affirmative action by the House on the bill as it now stands in order that an adequate wilderness preservation system, subject of extensive public hearings over the past several years, may become a reality in 1962. The wilderness preservation proposal would establish sound national policy and program for preserving some of our rapidly vanishing primitive and virgin areas, all of which are already in Federal ownership. We must keep some of these fine examples of natural and unspoiled lands for future generations to see and enjoy, as have we, and also for their scientific and educational values. Data submitted by the U.S. Forest Service for 14 States, mostly western, to the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs on February 23, 1961, reports the allowable timber cut for forest lands, other than those now designated as wilderness, wild, or primitive, and the actual cut in 1960. The total cut was substantially below the allowable cut, showing that there is no need to log the wilderness areas covered by S. 174. Assume, however, that all of the timberland now open to commercial use were being harvested to its full potential. Opening the lands which S. 174 seeks to protect could not possibly provide enough more timber to meet the future needs of our exploding population, and it would be necessary to find a substitute. Meanwhile, our vanishing wilderness would be unretrievably lost. Population pressure with its resultant stress and anxiety factors increases the need for recreational opportunity-close to home when there is little time, and "away from it all" when time permits. Wilderness areas fall in the latter category and are places where one may hike, backpack, trail ride, hunt, or fish in the serenity of wilderness environment, away from alarm clocks, phones, and so forth, and where the body and the spirit become reconditioned to better withstand the pressures in the year ahead. Under the wilderness preservation proposal, wilderness would not be locked up forever, as has been charged. Should the time come when it would be to the public interest to open some or all of these lands to commercial use, the legislation provides a way. Until and unless that time should come, let us keep what remains of our American heritage. S. 174, without crippling amendment, is a way of doing just that. As I listened to one of the former speakers who mentioned the Legislature in Nevada passed a resolution in opposition to the wilderness bill, I was reminded that our own California Legislature, just this last year, passed a resolution which goes entirely in favor of the President's message with respect to our natural resources, supports it entirely. If you will recall, one of the planks of the President's program for natural resources is to enact the much-needed wilderness bill. I will be glad to file my copy of the resolution with the committee if you would like to have it. Mr. JOHNSON. We will make this a part of the file. I do believe the committee has received this resolution from the California Legislature. Mrs. SHERIDAN. Thank you. Mr. JOHNSON. Our next witness is Mrs. Janson. STATEMENT OF MRS. DelMAR JANSON, SACRAMENTO, CALIF. Mrs. JANSON. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I am Mrs. DelMar Janson, a homemaker of the Sacramento area, and I am also speaking for my husband who is at work now in Mr. Johnson's area in Red Bluff. He just commuted back up there this morning. So we actually live in both sections of California. You are hearing views of scientists, businessmen, conservationists, and outdoorsmen concerning the pending wilderness bills. I should like to be heard in favor of the wilderness bill (S. 174) on behalf of the homemakers of this area-perhaps too often a silent group for lack of a feeling of significance. Yet, if Peter Marshall's reference to women as "keepers of the springs" still holds that is, that as mothers, teachers, and youth leaders the example and vision of women set the tone of character in each succeeding generation-then our view very well may be of signifi cance. What vision of America, past, present, or future, can possibly encompass her rugged grandeur, her spirit of freedom, and her aspira tion for greatness without the preservation in some areas of the physical environment which helped to shape the destiny of our Nation? Can we ever truly appreciate what our forefathers and mothersdid for us in exploring, settling, and conquering the wilderness of this continent without confronting, and perhaps in some small measure experiencing, the forces of nature they encountered? For example, how incredible are the exploits of the Donner party and others who crossed the summits of the Rockies and Sierras with covered wagons to those of us who drive via trans-Sierra highway today. Then, too, a survival expedition in a wilderness area might be as beneficial as a week in a bomb shelter-or more so, especially for the vast majority who do not and probably will not have such a facility for training purposes at least. These same forces have also served to place in evolutionary perspective the machinery of mankind. Such "humility" would seem a necessary condition for real learning and progress, wherein new ways of doing things better are sought. Others have gone to greater lengths in reviewing the provisions of S. 174. May I just reemphasize that this measure seeks no special gain for one segment of the people over another nor does it interfere with already existing commercial operations. Its major purpose is to bring public lands under public control. The proposed wilderness system is to consist, basically, of Federal land already set aside as wilderness areas within our national forest and park systems. It calls for congressional review of future changes in the wilderness system-and the advantages of such a review over administrative fiat in maintaining public control no doubt are apparent to Conressmen and Congresswomen and the general public alike. I ask you to give S. 174 a chance to get to the floor of the House in time for action; in lieu of allowing the bill to die in committee, which in a sense negates the democratic process when it has already passed one body of Congress. Perhaps the members of this committee and other Representatives in the House will see the value of taking action for the future as a symbol of faith in our American heritage in this era of crisis living. Thank you. Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mrs. Janson. Our next witness is Mr. Robert Marshall, of Pomona, Calif. STATEMENT OF ROBERT MARSHALL, POMONA, CALIF. Mr. MARSHALL. Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee, my name is Robert Marshall, and I'm employed in the electronic design review department of the torpedo division of Aerojet-General Corp. at their Azusa plant. My job is to help make sure that any aspect of the electronics in the Mark 46 torpedo which could cause that weapon to fail in its vital mission is spotted and, if possible, corrected. The job is an important one, since there are many who feel that an antisubmarine. weapon such as the Mark 16 may well be used against a real target even in times of peace. Why did I take a day off to come up here? You may argue that my time would be better spent on the job, but I'm here to help insure that I can do my job efficiently. Let me explain myself. |