Idaho Wilderness Hearings

Statement:

Mrs. Montano. Senator, my name is Bee Montano and I live here in Boise. And my major objection to the future wilderness in Idaho is religious. I think you in fact have heard a lot of religious testimony here today and I'm not going to I believe that you have heard a lot of religious testimony here today but it's been called some other terms. This environmental improvement that we need ecological, preservation ists and so on, because antiprivate property and it is antipeople. But basically it's anti-God. The movement has been discredited over and over. At the polls in Idaho and by history. And here we are fighting their 92 million whatever annual budget in Idaho again. I'd like to quote from one of their national publications and I think it's fair because the issue — publication is called Wilderness and it's the current issue. An ancient German law prescribed cap ital punishment for someone who wantonly peeled the bark of a living tree. The offender was condemned to have his navel cut out and nailed to the part of the tree he had mutilated and then he was driven around the tree until his intestines were wound around the trunk. His life thus replaced the violating skin of the tree. This heathen practice and worshipping of false gods and this socalled ancient German law were presented in this magazine as being good. Another article in the same magazine refers to the time of American's original productivity and abundance as the dark ages. They simply put darkness for light. One graduate of the wilderness society has founded the organiza tion called Earth First and is quoted as saying it should be a pio neering a revolution Questioning the very philosophical tenets of our Western civilization. Gentlemen, whether we like it or not, these misguided extremists are engaged in what they consider a holy war. The responsible time and place to stop it is here and now, legally, reasonably, with due process. Firm legislation is needed designating no further wilderness in Idaho and releasing all nonwilderness, so-called wilderness lands to multiple use.