Idaho Wilderness Hearings

Statement:

Mr. Brown. Senator McClure, I brought with me a—I'm an elementary school teacher, and my degree is in biology, my advocation is forestry. I'll provide a copy of my map and my report later on. This is an aerial photomap of the northwest corner of Bonners Ferry Ranger District; Long Canyon untouched forests running on the bottom of the canyon surrounded by areas that are unproductive or unsuitable for logging. Long Canyon is the natural forest corridor to connect the valley floor down here with the Selkirk Crest and runs to the top of the ridge up here. I favor Long Canyon as being a forest wilderness. I think we need to establish a forest wilderness to connect the valley with the alpine community up above. It's a unique forest community that we have here in north Idaho centering around Bonners Ferry for about a 50 to 75 miles radius. To the north of us, northwest you can see the multiple use area of Smith Creek and Boundary Creek and the surrounding drainages that adjoin into there. Many roads have been constructed into that area for logging roads, and many sights have been logged in that. Roads seem to be expanding over the last 10 years at a pretty good rate. I've updated the map to about 1982 on the roads. The clearcuts here that are in white have been updated to about 1979. As you can see, there are roads now approaching Long Canyon right on up to the crest, and there's been logging right at the very crest edge of Long Canyon. This is multiple use, and what makes it multiple use really is logging, it's roads, clearcuts, it's disturbing the watersheds, and disturbing the wildlife. A start difference between Long Canyon here and multiple use, but let's look at it a little bit further.