Idaho Wilderness Hearings

Statement:

Mrs. Voelker. Good morning, Senator, my name is Sandra Voelker, I'm a resident of Idaho and I would like to speak for addi tional wilderness this morning. I've heard a lot of people this morning say that they have lived in Idaho for a great number of years and so have their families, and with a lot of the opinions stated, I can only say that it seems that familiarity breathes contempt. I was born in Nebraska. And in Nebraska the land is divided very neatly into squares, and we spend a lot of time dreaming 671 there. We go with with maps to the Western States and we plan our vacations. We look at those maps and we find the big areas of green; we don't look for the roads, we don't look for the real estate developments. We look for places to vacation, for places to get away. It was very important to me then, and it's still important to me now as an Idaho resident. This is a personal argument but, as you can see, it's also an economic argument. Tourism is a very im portant industry here. There are two ways to look at this situation. One of them is prac tical and economic, and I think that's been handled beautifully. The other one concerns the quality of the State and the quality of our lives as a result of how we treat that State. One argument I would like to address is one that I've heard sev eral times, and that is, that wilderness is supposedly not for every one. It's being maintained for supposedly a very small percentage. I have heard the handicapped and the elderly mentioned as people who can't use the wilderness. I really don't know if the elderly and the handicapped would agree with that. I don't understand why, if that is the case, we have handicapped organizations who are orga nizing behind wilderness and behind their support for wilderness. It doesn't seem to make any sense, I think we're putting words in their mouths. There seem to be other rationale behind this argument. Probably part of it is economic, undoubtedly. It seems like the other part of it, perhaps, could be an excuse for some sort of indolence. I would like to know when it became so abhorrent to Americans to put out a little effort for their enjoyment. It looks to me like we have an argument here as the same kind of argument we have for network television, and look what that did to quality. There's nothing wrong with sweating a little bit to get something that's worthwhile; I think we'd all benefit from it. To kind of summarize economic arguments, we've got the timber and the mining industry saying that they need to earn the dollar today. They say we'll get some part of that dollar, I am not so con vinced. I would like to say that probably that dollar could be earned tomorrow if it's not earned today through some careful planning. The wilderness that we use unwisely today will never in its natural, original state be available to us again; that's a perma nent commitment. We are urged to act with expediency; we are urged to — it seems we are almost being urged to rush through this situation. In issues like that, often, things like morality, sensitivity, quality, and aes thetics get pushed aside. It seems like those kind of values are more basically American than economic gain, or at least maybe they should be. Also these things generally end up being counter productive, even economically. Thank you very much.