Idaho Wilderness Hearings

Statement:

Mr. Huebner. I'm Marty Huebner. I'm speaking on behalf of Pete, we're exchanging positions. My name is Marty Huebner. I'm speaking as a private citizen as a former back country license guide. Senator, most of what we've heard today about justifying why we should use the wilderness is based on so-called economic reasons. In my view, many of the facts and figures cited for so-called economic reasons were pretty onesided, dishonest, and misleading. Perhaps without meaning to, most were slanted for the benefit of one indus try or interest group. And if I hear that big lie that wilderness locks up everything one more time, I think I'll throw up. If we look at the situation absolute honesty, in terms of how we, U.S. taxpayers, fare in nearly every transaction involving public lands, we taxpayers lose money. This is not the land management agencies fault, it's the Congress because that body has not provided a way for the Government to even recover its costs in multiple-use ventures, much less add a little money to the Treasury. 670 Multiple use of public lands refers to timber, recreation, grazing, water, soils, mining, wildlife, and I could prove, if I had the time, that we taxpayers subsidize them all. We lose money overall on timber sales, as has been mentioned, because all Government costs involved aren't recovered. We taxpayers get no compensation for use of public lands and water's free by recreationists like me who use them, and the men and women who harvest fish and wildlife like I do; we get no compensation for that. It's all for free. We tax payers get no compensation for some waters provided free to cities, agriculture and industry from public lands. We get no compensa tion for the mineral wealth extracted free from public lands by the mining industry, it's all a big giveaway. And we get about 50 cents on the dollar back from our grazing. As I said, we taxpayers subsidize all multiple use, but since we taxpayers are also part of the communities, industries and interest groups involved, Congress won't be changing the situation. The only way we can cut Government spending involving these public lands and perhaps help cut down on our horrible national debt in question is to leave them as wildernesses. We didn't buy wildernesses, we didn't make wildernesses, we got them free. It's our duty to leave them in the public trust and mini mize our tax burdens. So much for the economic issues involving wilderness. I agree with the thousands of other men and women and kids in Idaho who hunt and fish, many of them members of the Idaho Wildlife Association, that we keep all wildernesses study areas, Forest Service, and BLM as wilderness, especially the Endangered Idaho Wilderness Core. We must not deviate from the methods Congress has used in the past to methodically and deliberately evaluate and establish wildernesses. The wilderness is patient; the only people really to exploit our public resources are impatient ones who want to get their grubby little hands on it. If the lands are designated for nonwilderness use but then so not used, these lands must be available to be reevaluated as wilderness at some future planning period. In the last year I personally have been on foot in 10 of Idaho's national forests. I've even been to Alaska twice and seen much of their wilderness that everybody talks so much about. Our beautiful and unique Idaho wildernesses are better; let's keep them as they are.