Idaho Wilderness Hearings

Statement:

Mr. Harbuck. My name is John Harbuck. I own and operate a small wood products manufacturing business in Sandpoint. I would like to address the question of multiple use as it relates to wilderness. The Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act mandates several uses to be considered when managing our national forest lands: Timber, forage, watershed, wildlife, and recreation. Wilderness classification allows or enhances four of these five uses; only the timber option is foreclosed. Intensive timber management, on the other hand, can be deleterious to these four. Idaho is a wilderness State. Its large acreage of undeveloped land pervades the consciousness of its residents and has a profound influence on their lifestyle. Idaho cannot afford to compromise its character by mandating development for its remaining unprotected roadless lands. North Idaho currently has no designated wilderness areas, but it should. The Salmo-Priest should be so designated to protect its old growth cedars and its mountain caribou and grizzly habitat. Long Canyon as the last major unroaded drainage in the Selkirks with its old growth forests and the Selkirk Crest with its beautiful alpine lakes and granite spires together make a gem of an area. I 32-427 0- 84 22 330 have visited, summer and winter, some of the more accessible lakes—Harrison, Pyramid, Ball, Long Mountain—and been in the headwaters of Long Canyon. Magnificent country! Scotchman's Peak should also receive wilderness protection. I have hiked up Scotchman Peak the past couple summers and seen goats on adjacent Goat Mountain. All three of these areas are important grizzly habitat as recognized by the Forest Service; and the areas lay within two of the five recognized viable grizzly ecosystems in the lower 48: The Cabinet-Yaak Grizzly Bear Ecosystem and the Selkirk Grizzly Bear Ecosystem. The Great Burn/Cayuse Creek and Bighorn/Weitas Areas on the Kelly Creek District of the Clearwater National Forest should also be classified Wilderness. I have spent 3 weeks in each of the past 4 years doing field studies.