ATHERTON, CALIF., November 5, 1961. Hon. GRACIE PFOST, House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, May I express for the record my personal and enthusiastic support for the wilderness bill. JOSEPH C. HOUGHTELING, Chairman, California State Park Commission. LOS ANGELES, CALIF., October 27, 1961. Hon. GRACIE PFOST, Nampa, Idaho. DEAR MRS. PrOST: Please enter this statement of support for the wilderness bill as a part of the record of the McCall, Idaho, hearing. After having had the opportunity of traveling through the wonderful Sawtooth Mountains this past year, I feel that they should be protected and kept in their present unspoiled state for future generations to enjoy. The wilderness bill should give them the legal protection that they need. Sincerely, WM. RUSSELL HUBBARD. KETCHIKAN, ALASKA, November 15, 1961. HOUSE COMMITTEE ON INTERIOR AND INSULAR AFFAIRS, GENTLEMEN: I want to go on record as being opposed to S. 174, the wilderness bill, because it will lock up mineral resources that Alaska needs to grow and develop. Being a resident of Alaska for more than 30 years and having an interest in mining a major portion of that time I feel that I am justified in voicing my protest of this bill. I cannot see any valid reason for passage of this bill at this time nor in the foreseeable future as Alaska is already a wilderness and except for the immediate coastal areas, and presently populated areas, will remain a wilderness. As a new State, Alaska needs an opportunity to take full advantage of every natural resource she has. One very important resource that could be lost to her through passage of this bill would be minerals, both metallic and nonmetallic as well as oil. Though mining in Alaska has declined greatly since World War II, there has been a much renewed interest in this field in recent years by large mining interests and several very favorable areas appear as if they will be developed in the very near future. These large mining interests have spent, and are spending many dollars on exploration and development programs and will continue to do so as long as there is some assurance the land will not suddenly be withdrawn and declared a wilderness area. I am more in favor of developing our own mineral resources than I am of loaning money to some foreign country to develop their mineral resources, then buy their minerals to the detriment of our own mining industry. I request that you consider waiting 10 or 20 years to let us Alaskans find out just what we do have and what we Alaskans would like to do with our Alaska. I sometimes wonder how many members of these various committees that are so set on doing all this good for Alaska have ever set foot on Alaskan soil and if so how many have ever "lit out for the criks" for a week or two with nothing but a pack and their 30/30 rifle. Very respectfully yours, JOHN W. HUFF. HUMBOLDT COUNTY BOARD OF TRADE, HOUSE COMMITTEE ON INTERIOR AND INSULAR AFFAIRS, GENTLEMEN: We would like to have the enclosed statement pertaining to S. 174 included in the record at your hearing in Sacramento, Calif., November 6, 1961. Cordially yours, DON CAVE, Greater Eureka Chamber of Commerce. Chairman, Humboldt County Board of Trade. Chairman, Natural Resources Division, Greater Eureka Chamber of R. F. DENBO, Manager, Greater Eureka Chamber of Commerce and Humboldt County Board of Trade. STATEMENT OF GREATER EUREKA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AND HUMBOLDT COUNTY BOARD OF TRADE, EUREKA, CALIF. The national forests and their many resources are vital to the economy of California. This is particularly true in Humboldt County, Calif., which is located in the northwest corner of the State. Approximately 40 percent of our area in Humboldt County is off the tax rolls-owned and controlled by government. Humboldt County has 105,000 people. Seventy-five percent of the economy of Humboldt County is directly related to forest products. Fifteen thousand people are employed in the harvesting, manufacturing, and handling of forest products in our county. The Forest Service's "Program for the National Forests" has provided the American people with a well-rounded and far-sighted development and conservation plan for the Nation's national forest areas. We understand this program has been well received by the Congress and we in northern California subscribe to it without reservation. The program is timely in that it plans ahead for all the multiple uses to which the country's vast forest domain is dedicated-the utilization of water, timber, recreation, wildlife, and forage resources, and for their protection and development. Of the greatest significance in the present management of the national forest system, as well as plans for the future, is the emphasis placed on multiple-use programs, as well as sustained yield, to meet the increasing demands of an exploding population. Multiple use of all of our lands will create greater yields and services to meet the needs of the American people; there will be increasingly substantial, direct financial returns to the Nation and local areas; there will also be secondary and intangible benefits. In other words, we feel that developing our national forests and nationally owned lands to their full use is a good businesslike investment. Self-centered interests and pressures, unless controlled, could take invaluable Federal holdings out of the people's hands and put them to a single-purpose use in effect, lock them up. In California in particular, this would be unthinkableas an example the current pressure for greatly expanded wilderness areas in some cases at the expense of multiple-use management. We are concerned with the national direction and policies which guide our national forest and Federal land administration. Our interest lies not only in terms of job opportunities in the utilization of forest resources, but also in terms of natural resource conservation in general. The national forest and multiple-use policy is being challenged in many places. We request that, should these interests and groups attempt to legislate against the principles of multiple use and sustained yield on federally controlled lands, you will give full consideration to the continuing multiple use of our national forests and Federal lands. This multiple-use program gives not only one segment of the population the benefit of these lands, but is good for all segments of the people at any and all times. Therefore, the Greater Eureka Chamber of Commerce and the Humboldt County Board of Trade wish to go on record as being definitely opposed to S. 174. DON CAVE, President, Greater Eureka Chamber of Commerce. GEORGE J. COLE, Chairman, Humboldt County Board of Trade. Chairman, Natural Resources Division, Greater Eureka Chamber of R. F. DEN BO, Manager, Greater Eureka Chamber of Commerce and Humboldt County NEVADA HEREFORD ASSOCIATION, Reno, Nev., November 9, 1961. Hon. GRACIE PFOST, House Interior Committee, House Office Building, Washington, D.C. DEAR MRS. PrOST: Please include in the record my opposition to S. 174 since it does not make proper provision for multiple use which is so essential to the growing economy of the West. Sincerely yours, JOHN E. HUMPHREY. COVINA, CALIF. GRACIE PFOST, Nampa, Idaho. DEAR MRS. PFOST: I was unable at the last moment to attend the recent hearing in Sacramento, Calif., on the wilderness bill. I wish however to go on record as favoring the wilderness bill, S. 174, which will go far to preserve some of our fine country for future generations. I wish to add this letter as a part of the hearing record. Thank you. Mrs. TRUDIE HUNT. LOS ANGELES, CALIF., November 5, 1961. Hon. WAYNE ASPINALL, Chairman, House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, 304 Post Office Building, Grand Junction, Colo. DEAR SIR: We want the Wilderness Act (S. 174). From my contacts in the mountains I get the impression that there must be millions of Americans who want this bill. Sincerely, P.S.-Please include this in the record. PAUL R. HUNTER. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SCHOOL OF EDUCATION, PUBLIC LANDS SUBCOMMITTEE, House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, DEAR SIRS: I attended your field hearings on the wilderness bill (S. 174) at Sacramento, Calif., on Monday, November 6, 1961. I was prepared at that time to make a statement but refrained from making it because of the large number of persons who wished to testify. As a result of what I heard at the hearings I have revised my original testimony and have incorporated it in this letter in the hope that it may be included in the record of the hearings in whatever fashion is appropriate. I would like to urge you, as an individual, to report favorably on the wilderness bill. In order to avoid redundancy, I will not repeat the elegant arguments of the many who have spoken in favor of the bill before me, but rather I would like to respond to some of the criticisms made at Sacramento and to add a few additional positive statements. 1. A frequently repeated criticism was that the bill was designed to provide a single use for a very special and small group of people, often coupled with the additional statement that only the wealthy can afford to enter these wilder ness areas. I feel that these criticisms are a distortion of readily available facts. I am sure that it is not necessary to elaborate that the use of these areas for watershed control, ecological studies, recreation, and spiritual refurbishment add up to significantly more than a single use. The specialized group, and by implication selfish, so loosely referred to, has only one thing in common: A desire to enter these areas and to take from them many diverse things, depending upon each individual's own needs, which do not alter the essential character of the wilderness. Peoples' reasons for entering these areas vary from a desire to hunt and fish, through a desire for rugged physical exercise, to a desire to find a fresh outlook on the complexities of life in our confusing times. They may be infants, boys and girls, or men and women; laborers or Nobel Prize winners. I have met people from each of these categories in the wilderness each participating in his own way. Thus in the same way one might call those interested in the wilderness a specialized group one might also call all persons who live in America a specialized group because they share living space on the same continent. Such a grouping tends to mask the tremendous individual differences existing within the group and to give the false impression that it is a highly homogeneous and stereotyped collection of individuals. Is it expensive to enter wilderness areas? I do not think that it has to be; in fact, most people who enter do so very economically. I have met clerks, students working their way through college, and even old men living off of the land in my travels through our Nation's wild lands. I have spent many months in the back country throughout America and have yet to spend more than $10 a week, and that for food. That expensive equipment one must have: one sleeping bag (Army surplus- $5 to $10), one rucksack (Army surplus-$3 to $5), one mess kit (Army surplus-$1), and one canteen (Army surplus-$1). I have always been comfortable with no more special equipment than this and I am not aware of any way to live more economically outside of the wilderness. 2. The point was also made more than once, usually by a representative of an oil concern, that by putting roads into these areas they could be made more accessible to more people, particularly those who like to travel by automobile. There is little doubt that roads would accomplish this. However, there is no evidence that the out-of-door needs of these people could not be satisfied by extending facilities and roads in areas already partially or totally opened by roads. Thus, the increasing demand could be met without destroying our few remaining wilderness tracts. The logic employed, by those who advocate building roads into our virgin lands, implicitly concludes that opening these areas will bring more people into the out-of-doors, who will drive their automobiles greater distances, and hence use more gasoline than some alternative way of extending facilities. I have yet to see any evidence that would support this argument. I would also like to bring to your attention the following positive comments in addition to or, perhaps more correctly, in amplification of the statements made by many others in favor of the wilderness bill. Today, as our Nation rests under the heavy cloud of an impending nuclear holocaust-a land of tension and unrest-it seems very consistent with our heritage, that the same times give rise to the possibility for our people, as a nation, to think and act unselfishly with the cultural, scientific, and recreational needs of future generations as our motivating force. If we stay our responsibilities toward the future and act in the immediacy of the moment we may well find that there will come a day when there will be nothing left in that future for which we so zealously battle today. 1. We willingly spend many millions annually to preserve historic structures and other works of man as shrines to our past. It seems paradoxical that when we similarly try to preserve a tiny portion of the world that nurtured man embittered opposition is met. May not our wilderness areas serve today and in the tomorrows as an unretouched example of the structures wrought by the forces of an artist whose supple hands have been far more creative than those of any man? If the pending legislation is not enacted soon, the works of these hands, greater than any Rembrandt, will in time be lost forever and certainly cannot be expected to turn up years later in an old secondhand dealer's dusky backroom. 77350-62-pt. 3- 16 2. The wilderness has served, as we all know, as sources of inspiration, down through recorded history, for many of the greatest contributors to the common cultural heritage of the world. It is impossible to speculate what the world might have lost if these persons had not had their places in which to seek solace and insight. What will the world, desperately in need of great statesmen, philosophers, scientists, and artists lose if those who find their universal truths in the sanctuary of these areas can no longer find a wilderness? Is it not worth almost any price to maintain these wild tracts for this reason alone? Certainly, it must be worth the relatively small amount of money that will be lost because the natural resources involved cannot be commercially utilized to their fullest potentiality. Perhaps this inspirational value of the wilderness is best expressed in the words of Henry David Thoreau who knew and used it well: "They who know no purer sources of truth, who have traced up its stream no higher, stand and wisely stand, by the Bible and the Constitution, and drink at it there with reverence and humility; but they who behold where it comes into this lake or that pool, gird up their loins once more, and continue their pilgrimage toward its fountainhead." I hope that my comments will be of some value in your reflection on, and consideration of, the need for this wilderness legislation. Sincerely, JOHN G. HURST, Assistant Professor. STATEMENT BY W. S. PRICE, CHAIRMAN OF LEGISLATION, INTERCOUNTY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA, IN OPPOSITION TO S. 174 The northern counties of California are vitally concerned regarding any legislation which affects public lands. More than 60 percent of its lands are federally owned and the principal economies supporting the people living in the area are affected to a large degree and are dependent on their proper management for continued use of these lands for the benefit of all the people. The arbitrary nature of S. 174 is definitely class legislation and is without regard to the need of those within the area. It also restricts the proper enjoyment of recreation to the vast numbers of people who could ill afford the expense of any visitation to these proposed wilderness areas under the proposed act. The S. 174 implies that only those of above average income and unlimited leisure idleness would be able to make use of these isolated areas. The door would be closed to all but a few and entail great financial loss to industry, cattle grazing, and the proper use of watersheds for much needed water and power. It would also mean the loss to the communities nearby of the vacationers whose visits are increasing each year and who are able to visit areas now accessible. We are further disturbed that Congress, the elected representatives of the people, would lose full power for regulating the allocation of our public lands for the best good of the lands and for all the people. The lands within the national forest and national parks were originally withdrawn solely for the future use of all the people. We don't feel that S. 174 is designed to follow this concept. Therefore, we are wholely opposed, not only to S. 174, but to any act which would -deprive Congress of its authority. And Congress should give grave consideration to the effect of this proposed legislation at the local government levels, who are having a hard enough struggle to furnish needed service to its people, without losing a major portion of its economy by the withdrawal of lands for special service instead of their use by all the people. STATEMENT BY ALI J. SANDOZ OF INTERNATIONAL PAPER CO. Representative Pfost and members of the committee, my name is Ali J. Sandoz. I am manager of the Western Timber Department of International Paper Co. My headquarters are in Longview, Wash. I submit this written statement on behalf of International Paper Co. for the consideration of this committee in its deliberations regarding the Wilderness Act, S. 174. Today we as a Nation face a grave challenge to our future. It is a homegrown challenge, developing right here within the borders of the United States. It is the challenge of a vastly increasing population and greatly expanding demands |