economic value to the State as a tourist magnet is tremendous and is growing each year.

There is no basis for the argument that the wilderness bill would create a rich man's playground. It just depends on the manner you choose in which to enjoy it. You can walk for nothing. A horse can be rented for from $5 to $8 a day. Spot packing can be prorated among the participants for a lower figure. First-class guided trips are not over $20 a day. Trips for vacation by auto, staying at averagepriced hotels and motels, now usually cost this much at present prices; wilderness use is no more expensive than other types of vacation travel.

The real question is what does a person enjoy the most and how does he prefer to spend his vacation dollar. Many more people every year are enjoying this type of recreation and we must save and plan for the future for the many, many times the present number of persons who will want to use a small part of their land in this manner. And let us not in all of these considerations lose sight of the fact that is the public's land over which we are deliberating.

So whether it is a rich man's playground just depends on what you like to do. There are a lot of other things that cost just as much or more. I venture to say that most people who are up here testifying right now are paying $20 a day just to keep themselves here. I don't see how it could be called a rich man's playground. You can use it any way, from nothing to as rich as you want to go.

We here in Idaho are fortunate to have enough land that we can enjoy both intelligent development and use at the present and can still set aside a trust for the future.

We of the Idaho Wildlife Federation believe that S. 174 will accomplish this without working an undue hardship on anyone. It deprives them of nothing they are now using.

We urge the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs to do all it can to expedite the passage of S. 174 in its present form without weakening changes or amendments.

Thank you.

Mrs. Prost. Thank you, Mr. Day.

The committee will stand in recess very briefly.

(A short recess was taken.)

Mrs. Prost. The committee will be in order.

The next witness will be Mr. J. Michael McCloskey, Federation of Western Outdoor Clubs, Eugene, Oreg.

Mr. Pierre Pulling will be called to follow Mr. McCloskey.

STATEMENT OF J. MICHAEL MCCLOSKEY, FEDERATION OF WESTERN OUTDOOR CLUBS, EUGENE, OREG.

Mr. MCCLOSKEY. Madam Chairman and Mr. Olsen, my name is Michael McCloskey, and my address is 309 Tiffany Building, Eugene, Oreg. I am appearing today on behalf of the Federation of Western Outdoor Clubs and its affiliate clubs in the Pacific Northwest with over 6,000 members, and particularly on behalf of the Obsidians, Inc., of Eugene, Oreg., an outdoor club.

The Federation of Western Outdoor Clubs strongly supports the wilderness bill (S. 174) and urges the House of Representatives to promptly follow the lead of the Senate by enacting the bill into law.

The bill is important because it will provide statutory protection for the great, scenic wildlands of the West which are already dedicated to wilderness use. These lands are dedicated to such use under administrative regulations, and their status can be changed by administrative decision.

In recent years extractive commercial interests have begun a campaign to shrink the proportion of land dedicated to wilderness. They have talked about eliminating so-called nonwilderness quality lands from dedicated status. At present only 1.2 percent of the State of Oregon is dedicated to wilderness status, only about 5 percent of the State of Washington, and about 6 percent of the State of Idaho. These interests are not willing to leave this small share of these States to recreationists to enjoy in an unspoiled state. Even though much of the Nation's finest scenery is concentrated in these areas, these commercial interests are not content until they can also have the ninetenths of 1 percent of the Nation's commercial forest acreage which is located in existing wilderness areas. To these interests, the only land which is truly of wilderness quality is the land above timberline without trees or that without minerals-the lands with trees or minerals they say are "not of wilderness quality," and they want them.

The pressures from these interests are so intense that administrators need the assistance of clear statutory guarantees to resist them. Already in recent years local administrators have been crumbling before the assault. The whole western fourth of the Three Sisters Primitive Area was given to the lumber interests in 1957, and in the last year five limited areas in Oregon and Washington, which had been managed to retain their special natural qualities, have been declassified and largely turned over to commercial interests. Six more such areas are planned for similar declassification in 1962. Five proposals are now pending for invading existing wild areas on the Pacific coast with winter sports developments.

Unless the Nation as a whole asserts its dominant interest in preserving the 2 percent of the Nation's face which remains wild as a relic sample of the way the Nation once was, little will soon remain. Local administrators should be protected against the pressures of powerful local commercial interests. Congress should guard the future of the wilderness system and make the determinations of whether these lands should be kept wild or violated.

The wilderness bill does not add new acreage to wilderness status. All it does is to give Congress the power to add or subtract acreage from the system once it is stabilized after a 10 year period of study. During that period, appropriate administrative agencies will determine which parts of existing primitive areas, national parks and monuments, and wildlife refuges should be kept permanently wild.

These agencies have this power now. However, if the wilderness bill becomes law, either House of Congress will have a veto over what the agencies propose. This is an added check which does not now exist. Commercial interests have been proposing that Congress should have to enact legislation adding each area individually. No such requirement exists now, and such a requirement obviously is suggested to provide a cumbersome procedure which would delay the addition of many of these areas to the system. Under the provisions of the bill, Congress can easily block any proposal which it finds unsatisfac

tory, but a complicated process of hearings and scheduling is not required for action which is now handled administratively in a simple fashion.

When the Multiple Use-Sustained Yield Act of 1960 was passed conservationists were assured by its proponents that the Multiple Use Act would not be used to defeat pending legislation to establish a national wilderness preservation system. Yet at these and comparable hearings the argument is made again and again that the wilderness bill is contrary to the meaning of multiple use and the provisions of the Multiple Use Act of 1960. This argument is completely fallacious and represents a breach of good faith since conservationists supported the Multiple Use Act on the condition that the act would not be used to defeat the wilderness bill.

The Multiple Use-Sustained Yield Act of 1960 states clearly that "the maintenance of areas of wilderness is consistent with the purposes of the Act."

Moreover, wilderness areas under Forest Service management are subject to four out of the five statutory uses established in the actwater, wildlife, forage, and recreation. It is hard to find better multiple-use management than is found in wilderness areas. Only timber harvesting is excluded. Yet lumber companies would have us believe that timber harvesting is imperative for multiple-use management. It is not. Their insistence that timber be an established use on every acre of national forest land really represents a kind of single-use mentality. Recreationists are often willing to concede commercial use of 90 to 95 percent of our land, but they do think a little can be spared from such use. Commercial interests, on the other hand, seem to demand entry on all lands.

It is curious to observe the arguments these interests sometimes use to gain entry. Lately they have been posing as friends of roadside. recreationists. One only needs to look at how these interests leave their own lands for roadside recreation to know what is planned for the wild areas they want to invade.

These interests constantly cite disparaging statistics about the use of dedicated lands. Four observations are in order:

(1) The methods for counting the number of wilderness users are so limited and conjectural as to make the figure quite unreliable.

(2) The figures cited often refer to recreational visits and not to the number of visitor-days of use. Whereas visits to campgrounds may last only 2 hours, visits to wilderness areas may last 2 weeks.

A once

(3) The value of a wilderness visit is not comparable in quality and importance to a visit to a developed recreational area. in-a-lifetime visit to the Selway-Bitterroot Primitive Area may be more memorable than a hundred visits to a nearby picnic ground.

(4) The use of wilderness areas is not limited to direct entries into it. Use also encompasses indirect use in viewing an unspoiled panorama from a distance and encompasses vicarious use by those who merely read about such areas and enjoy pictures of them.

The wilderness of America belongs to all Americans, not just to those who live near enough to it to extract a profit. This heritage belongs to Americans in Massachusetts as well as those in Oregon and Idaho, to those in Ohio as well as those in Washington State. And it belongs to future generations, too. Let us be farsighted and

unselfish enough to give other Americans a chance to know their heritage also.

Thank you. [Applause.]

Mrs. ProST. Thank you.

Our next witness is Mr. Pierre Pulling, Southeast Idaho Rod and Gun Club, Pocatello, Idaho.

You may proceed, Mr. Pulling.

STATEMENT OF PIERRE PULLING, SOUTHEAST IDAHO ROD AND GUN CLUB, POCATELLO, IDAHO

Mr. PULLING. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I am Pierre Pulling, of Idaho State College, and I am actually representing Bill Reynolds, the secretary of the Idaho Wildlife Federation because business commitments forced him to stay in Pocatello. I am not going to technically follow the items that I put down on the sheets that have been handed in, but there are two or three incidents that I am going to touch upon.

I am convinced that at least 90 percent of the public of the United States the people that own these lands-are in favor of the wilderness bill as it is written at the present time. I am strongly in favor of it.

There is some peculiar opposition. The people around Idaho State College I have talked to all favor it with a single exception.

I was talking to a faculty wife at dinner a couple of nights ago and she said she was against the wilderness bill. She didn't know I was coming up here. I said, "Have you read it?" and she said "No." I said, "Then why are you against it?" She said, "Anything that Frank Church is for, I am against." [Applause.]

She was an admirable Republican. I am not too good a Republican. I am sort of a "Church Republican," if you wish.

There was another item that amused me. An unreliable Republican though I am, I happened to be down in the courthouse last Friday, my wife and myself, to pay our respects to Senator Church, and he happened to run across Mr. Cox, who is the county assessor of Bannock County, and he was discussing this wilderness bill. I have turned 70 and he is older than I am. Mr. Cox mentioned that in 1907, at the time of the formation of the Forest Service under the inspiration of Gifford Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt, the grazers and the loggers and everybody else were terribly disturbed by that-it was tying things up. The people that have been talking today, most of them, have been falsely stating that the land is being tied up when they very well know it is not being tied up. This is especially true in connection with the alleged restrictions on recreation and hunting.

The people are too lazy to go a little distance into a wilderness area to hunt. It is the American way of life, as it were. I walked down from the lodge just before this afternoon's show started. It took me 8 minutes. Although I have turned threescore and ten, I found it a very, very easy walk.

You may have heard the story of the Chinaman back in the Gay Nineties, I think it was the Chinaman's name was Lee Hung Chaing, I think who was noting the fact that a railroad, I think it was the Twentieth Century Limited, had cut 2 hours off the time from Chicago

to New York and he said, "What does one do with that 2 hours after he has saved it?"

It is a question that is again part of this American way of life and dedication to physical unfitness.

There are a great number of things I would just be delighted to debate with the most vociferous opponent of this particular bill. All of their remarks are specious might be a one-bit word to describe it. They are against it because they are against it because they are against it, if I could emulate the late poet, Gertrude Stein.

Their remarks usually are the result of either cupidity or misunderstanding.

I think as far as the chambers of commerce are concerned, the chambers of commerce of the State of Idaho are public enemy No. 1 so far as conservation is concerned. [Laughter.]

I should have said something about the miners but I didn't have time. [Laughter and applause.]

Mrs. PrOST. Thank you.

Mr. Gene V. Hansen, president, Oregon Wildlife Federation, McMinnville, Oreg., and Mr. Henry Kral, Everett, Wash., will you please come forward and give copies of your statements to the clerk and then proceed with your testimony.

You may proceed, Mr. Hansen.

STATEMENT OF GENE V. HANSEN, PRESIDENT, OREGON WILDLIFE FEDERATION, MCMINNVILLE, OREG.

Mr. HANSEN. Madam Chairman and members of the committee, my name is Gene V. Hansen. My address is Route 1, Box 113, McMinnville, Oreg. I am president of the Oregon Wildlife Federation, which is composed of 33 conservation and sportsmen's clubs from all parts of the State. These clubs have an estimated membership of 5,000 to 6,000 individuals and we are affiliated with the National Wildlife Federation.

From our name it is usually inferred that our organization is primarily concerned with wildlife. However, it is not true that we concern ourselves only with this one important product of our basic resource. Rather, let us say that we champion the cause of proper interrelationships between the land, water, and people toward the end that the world be maintained in perpetuity as the most pleasant environment possible for people. We are proud and happy to present our thoughts to this committee.

The Oregon Wildlife Federation went on record as of June 27, 1959, urging the immediate passage of the wilderness bill then before Congress, and since that time we have written letters and talked to our congressional members requesting them to do what they could to help pass this very important legislation.

In Oregon for a number of years we have had a very vivid reminder of the inability of departments within a department to work together on the disposition of lands in the Klamath Basin for the benefit of all citizens. With this and the commercial connections of many of the witnesses appearing before this committee it must be becoming more and more apparent to you that Congress should have the final say as to the disposition of our irreplacable wilderness lands. We beseech