Idaho Wilderness Hearings

Statement:

SENIOR COUNCIL, SANDPOINT, IDAHO Ms. Cox. Senator McClure, I'm Ala Mae Cox of Sandpoint, Idaho. And I'm the president of the Bonner County Senior Council. I'm here myself on behalf of the elderly people. They are appalled at the prospective change taking place in their areas. And they have love for this natural beauty. And they would like to keep it. So when my husband and I retired, we came to Idaho in a large part because of its wilderness areas. We felt that these areas would restrict large concentrations of people from settling in the State. And they would also keep the heavy industries from moving in and polluting our area. Thanks to our wilderness areas, we have some of the cleanest water available in America today. And we can thank our wilderness twofold for just being there to trap and slow down our water supply and again for holding out industry. It is through these wilderness areas that we're attracting a lot of tourism which is one of our great industries up in this part of the country. And we feel that for our grandchildren that are to be left, we would like to leave just a small portion of this wilderness area so that they might be able to see and enjoy what we're enjoying now. In addition, there's a number of reasons that we have for this that we feel that with the tourism, there must be something there that's attracting all these people that are coming into our area to see the wildlife and green forests and the uncrowded life that we have in our area. So I feel that I'm not a native of Idaho, but I chose to live here because of the wilderness areas. And we feel that the politicians are trying to sell off this part of what we came to enjoy and something that we will be enjoying. OK.