ONLY 6 AREAS IN WASHINGTON INCLUDED IN

NATIONAL WILDERNESS PRESERVATION SYSTEM

Acreage of 2,522,947 Is Less Than 6 Percent of Washington's Area

Mr. BARING. The testimony of the field hearings certainly showed that we have to come to a compromise. I know this committee is going to be as fair as it can in voting out a good bill.

The gentleman from Idaho.

Mr. WHITE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Zahniser, I want to compliment you on the very excellent, comprehensive, and all-encompassing statement that you have made. Mr. ZAHNISER. Thank you. My colleagues will share your commendations in that respect.

Mr. WHITE. I realize that this is a labor of love, and that you have put a great deal of time and consideration in preparing it. There is only one question I would like to ask you. That is: When you spoke about multiple use with respect to the national forest wilderness areas, I did not quite follow whether you meant multiple use would be extended to the wilderness area or whether it was to be wilderness in the national forest area was a part of multiple use.

Mr. ZAHNISER. Both, Mr. White.

Mr. WHITE. You said timber management, that is what threw me. Mr. ZAHNISER. Multiple use is the dominant principle in the administration of the entire national forests. That is by virtue of a recent act of Congress, as well as by tradition within the Service. Multiple use is defined in that act, and, in general, roughly, as that combination of uses in any area that best serves the public interest. We believe that the wilderness designations that have been made by the Forest Service and the Secretary of Agriculture, and that now we recommend for ratification, as it were, by the Congress, are made in conformity with that principle of multiple use; that is, as you consider the forests as a whole, this small percentage, approximately 8 percent-15 million out of 186 million acres-is properly designated for a best combination of uses as wilderness, for the realization of the overall purposes.

Mr. WHITE. I assumed that is what you meant, Mr. Zahniser. I wanted it explicitly explained.

Mr. ZAHNISER. Now, within the areas, themselves, the multiple-use program still goes on. Within the wilderness areas, the combination of uses includes watershed protection, which is dominant, dominant to the extent that if in a fire season or at any other time, protection of the watershed would be endangered by the recreational uses, the recreational uses would be prohibited for the time being.

Other multiple uses are camping and hiking and scientific study, various uses of the forests that comprise together a multiple-use package that is consistent with the whole program.

The only uses that are excluded within those areas of wilderness are the uses that would destroy their character as wilderness. In that sense, timber production, with the roads that would go with it, and other such uses, would not be consistent with the wilderness character, and so would be excluded. The timber management requirements of a particular national forest within which there would be an area of wilderness should be met outside the area of wilderness.

It is our objective, as an organization and as members of the public, to help produce the conditions that help in forest management outside of wilderness areas as another contribution to the privilege of having areas of wilderness.

So we feel that this program is thoroughly in accord, not as an exception to the multiple-use program, but as an example, an application of it.

Mr. WHITE. I agree with you, sir. The only question I have ever had with respect to how it may be implemented in my State is the extent of area that is being considered.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have no further questions.

Mr. BARING. The gentleman from Virginia.

Mr. MARSH. No questions.

Mr. BARING. Counsel?

Mr. PEARL. Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask Mr. Zahniser a couple of questions, so the record may be straight on the statistical data that are included here.

Mr. ZAHNISER. May we go off the record?

(Discussion off the record.1)

Mr. PEARL. There is still going to be a slight difference in the figures because of your use of the term "gross acreage" and of the gross acreage in each case.

I think the record should show that by gross acreage, insofar as the areas that are classified as wilderness, wild, canoe, and primitive are concerned, it includes within the acreage, areas that are not owned by the Federal Government.

Mr. ZAHNISER. Mr. Chairman, I will let Mr. Nadel discuss that, if it is all right with you.

Mr. BARING. Yes, fine.

Mr. NADEL. Yes; we understand that, Mr. Pearl.

Mr. PEARL. I just wanted the record to show that if there is a discrepancy between two sets of figures, it is because of your use of the gross acreage including within that definition lands that are not federally owned.

Mr. NADEL. That is correct.

Mr. PEARL. Thank you.

Mr. BARING. Thank you very much, gentlemen.

Mr. ZAHNISER. Thank you.

Mr. BARING. We appreciate your testimony very much. Thank

you.

The next witness is Spencer M. Smith, Jr., secretary, Citizens Committee on Natural Resources.

We are glad to have you with us, Mr. Smith.

STATEMENT OF SPENCER M. SMITH, JR., SECRETARY, CITIZENS COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Chairman, I am Spencer Smith, the secretary of the Citizens Committee on Natural Resources, which is a national conservation organization with its offices in Washington, D.C.

Our committee is governed by a board of directors, composed of some of the outstanding conservationists in the country. We have been interested and vitally concerned with wilderness legislation since the inception of such legislation.

1 The discussion referred to the differences in acreage that took place April 27, 1964, with the reclassification of the High Sierra Primitive Area as the High Sierra Wilderness Area. In addition, it is noted that subsequently the Shining Rock Wild Area was established in North Carolina.

Our testimony today will be, in large part, repetitious of our previous statements before this committee, and it is with this awareness that we shall try to restrict the length of our comments hereafter. It is inconceivable to us that members of the committee may not know of our desires for wilderness legislation in view of our repeated appearances on behalf of such legislation.

Neither do we feel that we will be discussing any matter not knowledgeable to this committee who has so patiently reviewed this legislation for so many years.

Other witnesses will spend more time in exploring the details of the respective types of legislation the committee has before it. Sufficient for our purpose is to indicate the traditional area of conflict and to suggest how the current proposals represent a reduction of this conflict.

Mr. Chairman, I first of all want to commend the committee, or perhaps the committee's staff, in preparing the excellent analysis of the many groups of bills that the committee has before it. Certainly it has been helpful to categorize these different measures, and it has been very helpful in our analysis of the many proposals.

By and large, I think it might serve the purpose of the committee to suggest the reason for some of these different categories, and some of the basic controversy that essentially caused this manifestation.

One could contend that almost any part of the many bills authorizing a wilderness system now before the committee is controversal to some degree. We want to consider the most significant of these controversies relative to the present legislation. The basic areas of disagreement stem from the procedure by which areas not now classified as wilderness would eventually be so classified.

In the past year, Senate action provided for wilderness areas to be determined on the basis of an Executive order reserving the right of Congress to dissent, thus affecting any such order. This procedure broadened the discussion and controversy of whether an erosion of congressional authority would result.

Others contend that the Executive should make the necessary review of the recommendations, present them to the Congress, and the Congress would dispose of such recommendations by enacting, amending, and/or failing to act. This disparity in viewpoints has been sufficiently wide, heretofore, to prevent the final passage of a wilderness bill.

I would like to suggest that in the early phases of the wilderness bill, it was thought to be that the executive branch of the Government would simply make a determination of the wilderness areas, would send them on to Congress, and Congress would have a right of veto. This was basically where the original parting of the ways of many considerations of wilderness took place. It was as a result of this controversy, however, that we grew closer and closer together in the spirit of compromise. The press release of the committee announcing these wilderness hearings categorized the proposals into three groups, which, in our judgment, was both useful and appropriate.

The concern of many of us in the process of classification of wilderness was that perhaps some of them would be lost while the Congress was deliberating, if we took this positive and affirmative approach. If the Congress did take the affirmative approach and did not get around to all of the wilderness bills, what would happen to the other areas the Congress had not touched up?