Idaho Wilderness Hearings

Statement:

Ms. Vorce. Representative Wood doesn't speak for everybody in district 20. I'm from Cobalt; I worked for the mine; I was promised a job for 20 years and was laid off without notice. Mining is rarely a stable industry. What industry does stand self-supportive and growing? Well, Senator, it's recreation. Logging, mining, and agriculture, though necessary, are all subsi dized and therefore on the corporate welfare system. By asking for 90 percent of the remaining forest lands, the timber industry is saying we need more trees in order to be self-supportive and healthy. Timber industry, you already have trees that are back 699 logged. The public in the long run pays for roads; the Government sells you trees at a loss; and you still can't make it. There are areas set aside as roadless wilderness; however, if we leave them as our only roadless areas, they will eventually suffer from over-use, over-recreation. Recreation does not need roads; it can grow and thrive on our abundance of wild lands. Undeveloped and basically undisturbed, wilderness is a land with clean water, an abundance of native fish, feeding grounds for the still large herds of elk and deer. It is a nonrenewable resource, not just for Idahoans to enjoy, but people throughout the world and for generations to come. Once it's opened to the first stages of develop ment, it's gone. I don't want hard release language used when this bill is written up. I don't want to see areas not classified now to be permanently banned from ever being considered wilderness. I do want to see the endangered Idaho wilderness core included in this legislation. I do want to see more than 50 percent of the re maining roadless land be protected as wilderness. We need to keep our wilderness as a part of the heritage of the past. Future generations should have the right to have a wilder ness experience. I know personally there would have been more folks to testify for the wilderness, except they had jobs to work and cows to milk. Thank you.