Idaho Wilderness Hearings

Statement:

Mr. Lagatella. I'm an employee of the U.S. Forest Service Bonners Ferry Ranger District and I would like to express my views concerning Long Canyon. There are many points we should concern ourselves with, but I'll have to limit myself to three. First, as you should know, the first and foremost purpose of setting aside the national forests was for watershed protection, not timber production. Long Canyon is now used as a control unit for a number of parallel canyons on the district. From it we accurately gauge the effects of logging in the other canyons. Without it we have no real basis of comparison. Long Canyon allows us to make this honest decision. Second, there has been some arguments concerning potential problems of forest fire in this area. The argument being without road access into the area there is no way to fight the fire. This I can assure you as a trained firefighter is ludicrous. There are roads to the top of parallel canyons which could provide reasonable access to the canyon. There are smoke jumpers who are often used 212 in areas even more accessible than Long Canyon is now. Also, the very structure of a climax stand inhibits large fires for there is very little down timber for the fire to build in as is often the case in managed areas where thinning and logging slash accumulates and carries the fire. These and any actions, even including the use of aerial retardent drops, are all sanctioned by the Forest Service, be it in a wilderness area or not. The third reason is that Long Canyon is a classic example of climax habitat types. In order to establish growth potentials the Forest Service has spent millions of dollars developing a method of classifying forests according to habitat types. In the length of this canyon nearly all of these habitat types exist. Nowhere, not even in Fisher and Parker Canyons does such a place exist. With these habitat types, we have an excellent laboratory for assessing the yields, interrelationships between serai and climax species and plant indicators. To disturb this would be a great silvancultural loss. I therefore request to keep Long Canyon and Selkirk Crest as wilderness since there is no other wilderness in Idaho.