The club recommends a Lake Clark National Park, as H.R. 39 does, of some 7 million acres. That includes land which has been claimed by the State, and it surrounds areas which have been selected by Native corporations.

I think that cooperative management is indeed indicated in an area like this, but whether that should be done by one overall land use planning regulatory commission as the Governor suggested, I am doubtful.

A commission which functioned in an advisory capacity to the different management agencies could be extremely useful. I don't think that we will know just how to handle that until the final selection is made, because there is a vast difference between the proposals made in Senate bill 499, for example, which was the former Administration bill, and H.R. 39. Whichever one takes precedence is going to determine a good deal about what management will go on in the Lake Clark area. I believe that the Governor was speaking not only of Lake Clark but also of the Lake Illiamna area and all the way down to the Alaska Peninsula.

We have included this in one of our five regional systems as being under the control largely of the National Park Service, partly of the Fish and Wildlife Service, as far as Federal lands are concerned. We believe in a cooperative plan here, and it is just the way the presentation was made by the Governor. I think that the fifth system approach is fuzzy. I don't understand it, frankly.

I think that an advisory commission to the Congress on the administration of these lands could, perhaps, be a better way of going at it.

Mr. SEIBERLING. We thank you.

That has been my reaction to the proposals. Of course, if you look at the summary handed out at the time they announced their so-called system, it almost had an appearance of a device to keep all of the land open for development and so forth until the end of the century. Certainly, that I don't think this committee is about to do it.

Dr. WAYBURN. I am afraid the fifth system, as I understand itand it may be I just don't understand it-is another way of expressing the term multiple use.

Mr. SEIBERLING. That is what it appears to me. However, I do see some merit in coming up with some way of obtaining cooperation between all the various groups involved, the State, the Native groups, and the Park Service, or whatever administrative agency the Federal Government has in charge.

We have a totally different situation with respect to national forests. We do respect the national parks and wildlife areas, the forest being a multiple use concept. I guess we are going to just have to feel our way here and see if we eventually have an idea that crystalizes as to how to coordinate these things.

Dr. WAYBURN. I think this is the prime reason where real cooperation would be indicated.

Mr. SEIBERLING. Mr. Brower testified for the Friends of the Earth yesterday and made a proposal, and that is acquire back some of the State selections in order to eliminate some of the overlaps in the interlocking in appropriate areas.

I suppose we might acquire them back in several ways. We might exchange, or if necessary, buy with cash. Unfortunately, we have done it before, but we could do it again.

Well, thank you very much. The Sierra Club has been a tremendous supporter of conservation legislation before this committee and has been a great help to me. We welcome your input.

I would like to ask the minority staff if they have any questions?
Mr. HORN. Yes.

Mr. SEIBERLING. Mr. Clusen, were you going to testify?
Mr. CLUSEN. No.

Mr. HORN. A couple of questions, if I may.

If I could make a comment regarding the fifth system proposals made by the delegation with Mr. Young, I think the intent is to create a planning process for Alaskan lands rather than make arbitrary designations on a large scale. Now, I think that is the fundamental difference.

On page 20 of your statement you made a reference

Dr. WAYBURN. May I just state that we didn't have a problem when it came to allowing the State to select. We didn't have this problem when it came to allowing the Native people to select. The time came, and it was done.

Now, this is the time for all of the people of the United States to be able to select, and I cannot see why we would select with any more wisdom 25 years from now than we can today.

Mr. HORN. The question is about the statement on page 20.
Dr. WAYBURN. What page, please?

Mr. HORN. On page 20 you made a reference that most of Alaska's mineral resources are apparently outside the lands covered by H.R. 39, yet other information indicates that intense mineralization exists in the Wrangells area, the Brooks Range, and the proposed northern extension of Mt. McKinley Park. Would not the national interest be better served in terms of providing for our mineral needs by putting such areas in interim holding patterns to provide protection and not make a final determination unless we have had a further determination?

Dr. WAYBURN. As I indicated in my testimony, we admit there is mineralization inside the lands indicated for parks and refuges in H.R. 39. We think that it is probably no more than occurs in the rest of Alaska. The only reason it has been found in as much profusion as it has is because that is where the U.S. Geological Survey and Bureau of Mines have been looking. This is a section in the Wrangells where copper was discovered long ago. The copper was discovered and mined out.

As far as its commercial value is concerned, this is one of the problems in Alaska. Why did Kennecott Copper stop its copper extraction? Because it wasn't commercially worthwhile. It was so far from markets and took so much transportation costs, it was such country that it was hard to get into and hard to live in from a commercial standpoint. Therefore, they voluntarily gave up their mine and gave up their road.

I think that any large deposits of commercial value would have been identified and application would have been made for and the land probably would have been patented by now.

Mr. HORN. No further questions.

Mr. SEIBERLING. Mr. Crandell, do you have questions?

Mr. CRANDELL. No.

Mr. SEIBERLING. Ms. Westcott?

MS. WESTCOTT. No, sir.

Mr. SEIBERLING. Thank you very much, we appreciate your testimony.

Mr. SEIBERLING. The next witnesses represent the National Parks and Conservation Association. Mr. Anthony Wayne Smith is president and general counsel, and Mr. T. Destry Jarvis is administrative assistant for parks and conservation.

Mr. Smith, I see you have a fairly lengthy statement. Would you be willing to put that in the record and summarize it for us?

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Chairman, I suggest that if the subcommittee will accept the supplemental portion, which is the most lengthy part, I probably can dispatch the other part more rapidly by reading. Mr. SEIBERLING. Without objection, the supplemental statement will be printed in full in the record. You may proceed.

[Supplemental statement of Anthony Wayne Smith may be found in the appendix to today's proceedings.]

STATEMENT OF ANTHONY WAYNE SMITH, PRESIDENT AND GENERAL COUNSEL, NATIONAL PARKS AND CONSERVATION SOCIETY, ACCOMPANIED BY T. DESTRY JARVIS, ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT

Mr. SMITH. My name is Anthony Wayne Smith. I am president and general counsel of the National Parks and Conservation Association, NPCA, 1701 18th Street NW., Washington, D.C. 20009.

The NPCA is the principal national conservation organization of Americans concerned primarily with the protection of our great national parks and monuments. It is a broad-program environmental organization, concerned also with wildlife, forestry, pollution, land use, and population, both at home and abroad. It publishes National Parks and Conservation magazine, The Environmental Journal, received by all of its 40,000 members monthly. It derives its income almost entirely from the dues, contributions and bequests of its members and is therefore in a position to take an independent and objective position with regard to the management of the public lands systems of the United States.

The NPCA was founded in 1919 by Stephen T. Mather, the first director of the National Park Service, with a view to the enlargement and protection of the National Park System. We undertake to fulfill a function which we have discharged for nearly 60 years on a national basis when we comment here on the enlargement of the National Park System and the other land conservation systems of the United States as proposed in the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act-H.R. 39. We recommend the approval of that legislation by the subcommittee, the full committee, and the House, subject to a few comments contained in this statement.

The NPCA has a long history of concern with Alaska and its public lands. One of the members of its board of trustees, Mrs. Mark

Ganopole Hickok, is a well-versed and experienced conservationist widely known in Alaska. A substantial number of the members of NPCA serve us as consulting correspondents with respect to the management of national parks, forests, wildlife, refuges, and public lands in Alaska. The facilities of our board room and library at our national headquarters have been available during the years when Alaska has been a primary conservation focus as a meeting place for conservation organizations concerned with the development of a cooperative policy. The Environmental Journal has published numerous articles down through the years dealing with the scenic, wildlife, forest, wilderness, and other environmental resources of Alaska.

The NPCA has also been instrumental in organizing broad coalitions of labor and environmental organizations concerned with such issues as the oil pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez, the Amchitka nuclear explosion, and the problem of the best route for a pipeline to bring natural gas from the North Slope.

I have visited Alaska personally, traveling as far north as Port Barrow, having seen the North Slope and the Brooks Range, and having visited many of the units of the National Park, Forest, and Wildlife Refuge Systems. We can speak to you on these subjects from a background of personal experience and many years of accumulated knowledge on a professional level.

The preservation of the national interest lands of Alaska by inclusion in the public land systems of the United States as proposed in section I of the act is in our judgment in the interest of the people of Alaska and of America as a whole, and we recommend favorable action by the subcommittee, the committee, and the House.

The present bill represents, in our judgment, a well balanced integration of many private and public interests concerned with the good management of public lands in Alaska: parks, forests, wildlife, and scenery, recreational resources, cultural and archeological treasures, energy and mineral production, and the economic development of Alaska, as well as the protection of its fragile ecosystems.

I will not recount the history of the grant of statehood to Alaska in 1958, with which you are familiar, with its grant of 104.2 million acres from the public domain to the new State. Nor will I review the history of developmental pressures which followed from the discovery of oil on the North Slope. The passage of the Alaskan Native Claims Settlement Act, providing for cash and land allocations to Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts, is also well known to the members of the subcommittee.

The question before the House is the protection of the remaining lands in Federal ownership after these generous divestitures. The allocation of large areas of the remaining Federal lands to the experienced and specialized Federal agencies as proposed is a commendable proposal on which action should be taken promptly.

One of the purposes of the legislation which we strongly support is the protection of the complete ecosystems represented in the several Federal lands management systems. In many the ecosystems will extend through several of the agency systems, and cooperation among these agencies will be essential. In other cases they will lie

within the lands to be managed by a given agency, and the units should be large enough to facilitate such management and protection.

Another meritorious purpose of the legislation is the protection of the way of life and the cultures of the Native peoples of Alaska. It may well be difficult for the Natives to preserve their culture under the pressures of cities, commerce, investment, and development which have emerged in Alaska in the last decade or two. But those cultures have shown a surprising resilience, and their protection, if the Natives themselves desire to have them protected, should be a primary objective of national policy.

Accordingly, we recognize the support the purpose of the legislation to protect subsistence hunting, properly defined, in the units of all the land management systems dealt with by the bill. This decision represents a major departure for NPCA, from its established opposition to hunting in the national parks except within national recreation areas. Our established opposition deals only with sports hunting, and if the distinction is kept quite clear along the lines of the pending legislation, no violence can be done to established traditions of national park management.

Indeed, the practice of subsistence hunting, as understood by the Native cultures, can well be looked upon as part of a natural ecosystem which has sustained itself in Alaska for something like 10,000 years and which has proved itself compatible with the stability and diversity of both wildlife and human population.

We have reservations as the proposed national preserves in Title I, Yukon-Charlie, Chisana, and Toatak. Under other circumstances we would have insisted that they be established as national parks in the full sense of the word with full protection for wildlife and all other wilderness resources. We recognize that the present legislation provides greater protection for these areas than they might have received if established as NRAS.

We believe that a practical accommodation must be reached between hunters and nonhunters with a view to the protection of vital wildlife habitat. We would have supposed that the vast regions of Alaska not encompassed within the presently proposed additions to the protective land management system of the United States might have sufficed for hunting.

We note the establishment of Big Thicket National Preserve and Big Cypress National Preserve in recent years, classifications which we did not oppose with a view to avoiding conflict between the hunting and nonhunting points of view; but these compromises can be carried too far, and that might result in the strengthening of a completely antihunting point of view. We recommend that the subcommittee reconsider the national preserve designation with a view to including these units in the full national park category.

We strongly endorse the enlargement of Mt. McKinley National Park and Katmai and Glacier Bay National Monuments, and the change in designation of the latter two units to national parks.

We support the establishment of the Gates of the Arctic National Park, the Wrangells-Kluane International Park, and the other national parks and monuments listed in title I of the act.

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