Idaho Wilderness Hearings

Statement:

TRAIL MACHINE ASSOCIATION Mr. Atamanczyk. My name is Carl Atamanczyk. I'm president of Idaho Falls Trail Machine Association, one of five chapters in the State. Our organization is about 20 years old. As a nonprofit, con servation, and service-oriented group, the Idaho Trail Machine As sociation agrees that our wilderness areas are endangered from many sources. We feel, however ironically, one of the main threats comes from the very environmental movement seeking to protect it. Efforts to preserve pieces of land in their natural state go back nearly a century, but they received their greatest impetus when Congress adopted the Wilderness Act of 1964. Since then, more than 15 million acres have been classified as wilderness, an area larger than Delaware, Maryland, and Massachusetts combined. Also, since the 1964 act, we have had ample time to determine which areas are most suitable for real wilderness and which areas we can properly manage and still allow for multiple use. Also, as a family oriented trail bike association, we realize the great importance to protect fragile areas as wilderness. We do not support the rape, ravage, ruin, and run philosophy. But we do be lieve strongly in using the natural resources so abundant on and under our public lands, and in having our lands open to varied types of recreational activities for all types of users, not just a few selfish groups. Three years ago Congress considered wilderness classification for another 15 million acres in the lower 48 States and 70 million in Alaska. This is an area equal to all of New England, plus Pennsyl vania, Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey. The economic arguments against wilderness designation are well known. They lock up the land resources that can't be used. Miner als go unmined, crops go unplanted, livestock is barred from rangeland, and trees are allowed to rot and die. In some parts of wilder ness areas the Government lets forest fires burn. Enough timber to build thousands of homes can be wasted in just one fire like that. They sometimes smolder for months on end before dying out natu rally, but the Government reasons that since no one fought forest fires in the past, wilderness fires today should be allowed to burn themselves out. Rarely publicized is the fact that once land is declared wilder ness, it no longer has much to offer for recreation. People can't drive to a fishing area or a campsite because roads are prohibited; nor are any types of motors allowed, even though recent extensive studies by outdoor biologists have proven motors have little or no impact on wildlife. Building a permanent shelter is prohibited, and the Government has gone far enough to destroy many that were built long before the land was declared wilderness. This blanket policy has not only deprived hikers and other trail users of shelter they sometimes need, but has meant the destruction of historic structures built by men who used only an ax and a saw. In some 715 areas campfires aren't even allowed, and visitors may not have ar ticles made of foil or plastic in possession. Toilets were removed at one time from a trail on Mount Whitney in California because the structures didn't blend with the land scape. Later they found the trail littered with human waste, so the forest service ordered it closed to everyone except a few hikers who presumably were waste proof. What bureaucrats and activists alike overlook is that there are really two kinds of wilderness. One is physical, in which land is left untouched and unchanged. The other is spiritual wilderness, where people can go to get away from, though very briefly, the rules and regulations of bureaucratic harassment that are increasingly a part of our lives. Wilderness, as defined by the act of 1964, untrammeled by man, protects the physical but destroys the spiritual wilderness. In es sence, wilderness under the act is the private preserve of a very small minority, people who have the strength and the time to hike into it and who don t mind the rules and regulations imposed upon them. But how much land should we devote to that use? Many people wonder if the millions of acres of unused trees are partly to blame for the inflationary price of housing timber and paper products, not to mention other wood-based items such as pho tographic film, recording tape, rayon, cosmetics, and medicines. When you remove millions of trees off the market, the price of wood-related things is effected. The same goes for other products that could be mined or farmed on the same land. Also many of us back-country users are getting disgusted with all of the restrictions, despite those few who don't mind all of their back-country travel regulated. It was the wilderness people who gave the environmental lobbies the money and power to push their wilderness bills through Congress. They could just as easily reverse the process if frustration builds up. It seems obvious to me if some groups persist that we keep adding more wilderness, the public, one day, could overreact and eventually scrap all of it. Idaho's 3.8 million acres of wilderness is enough, taking into con sideration this is nearly one-fifth of the national forest lands in the State. Any additional wilderness will only prohibit our type of orfrom doing our share of trail maintenance in Idaho's ?;anization brests, which we no donate hundreds of man-hours and maintain hundreds of miles of each year for the benefit of all back-country travelers.