Idaho Wilderness Hearings

Statement:

Mrs. Baker. Senator McClure, there have been five generations of Bakers in Boundary County. His grandfather arrived in the early 1900's. And he has lived in the county 55 years. Various members of his family have been in the past and present employed in logging, mining, road building, and farming in the county. He spend 6 years as county commissioner between the years of 1958 and 1964. In that time, he had the opportunity to sit in on several occasions with the Forest Service and discuss their management plans. Since then he has seen drastic changes in those plans. For example, steep slope areas had been clearcut causing erosion with little regard to watershed and recommendations of their own hydrologists. He believes the Selkirk Crest and Long Canyon fall into the category of management. He'd also like to contrast the proposed management for Long Canyon and Cow Creek, which is an adjacent drainage. Nature and man have turned Cow Creek into a multiple-use area. Now the Forest Service is proposing to lock up this area in an attempt to turn it back into wilderness and will be spending considerable to do so. On the other hand, they propose to tear up Long Canyon which is currently natural. Senator McClure, where is the commonsense behind this type of thinking? What prompted him was an incident 3 weeks ago in which we took his daughter and family camping. When we reached the top of the ridge—a mountain ridge—his 6-year-old granddaughter pointed out and said, 'What made those ugly scares?' Later that day, his daughter reflected back to the past 20 years to all of those campouts, hikes, and memories that all of his children hold dear. How, then, he realized that the amount of changes those mountains had gone through. Four generations of Bakers have enjoyed the use of those mountains. He's concerned that the fifth will not know what the past generations have. He prays that the big dollar does not decide the issue. And that's it.