Idaho Wilderness Hearings

Statement:

Mr. Sorensen. Thank you for this time to speak. I think it's obvious by now that a large majority of the people of Idaho and the United States want and need more wilderness. What little we have is heavily used. What we don't have cannot be in stalled later. There will be more people and more wilderness use. What there won't be more of is places that qualify for designation as wilderness. It can't be manufactured or produced. All we can do at this point is save what little wilderness has escaped development and exploitation. Although there are a number of disguises for the opposition, they all boil down to one thing: the corporate bottom line. Molybdenum strip mines in Idaho's back country are not in the interest of the people of Idaho or the United States. Moly is worth about as much as dirt right now, and the oversupply of it will not diminish for at least a couple hundred years. There is a very small class of people in this country whose inter ests would be served by such mines; the people who own the oil companies. Cyprus Mine up Thompson Creek on the Salmon River is owned by Amoco Minerals, which is owned by Amoco Oil, which is owned by Standard Oil of Indiana, which is fairly hard to find out unless you know where to look. ASARCO Mining, which has large moly claims in the White Clouds up the creek from our ranch, is owned primarily by Stand ard Oil of California. What interest would an oil company have in developing a very expensive mining operation for a worthless substance? In a word, taxes. What a lot of people don't realize is that a strip mine such as Cyprus, or the proposed Castle Peak removal, is basically a way for an oil company to rechannel profits made elsewhere back into their own department of exploration, research and development, not to mention