Idaho Wilderness Hearings

Statement:

Mr. Nettleton. It's indeed an honor and a pleasure, Senator James McClure, ladies and gentlemen, and the news media, to have something to say in this very important subject: Proper management of our national forests. I am Ed Nettleton, born in Coeur d’Alene in 1910. I worked for the U.S. Forest Service from 1930 to 1940, and since then have been in the lumber industry for the past 45 to 50 years. I pray daily that our children, and children's children, as did our forefathers and myself, enjoy the wonderful God-given resources in this U.S.A. This can only be accomplished by proper management. Utilization is true conservation. However, in the last 30 to 40 years, our liberal policies set up by Federal bureaucrats have disregarded our past practical experiences and knowledge, and are setting our great forests on fire; I think a gross mismanagement. In late summer 1970, a forest ranger in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, contrary to the advice of some others, started a forest fire in the Ball Creek drainage, the last large fire that I personally worked on. This fire cost the taxpayers well over $1 million, and destroyed millions of feet of timber, plus leaving the drainage in very poor condition for reproduction. I'm going to skip a few here now and go on down to the last fire that was started late in May of 1983, up by Kingston, Idaho, approximately 500 acres of timberland at a terrific cost to we taxpayers. 220 Now, the Sierra Club, Audubon Society, and so-called Friends of the Earth, want to set aside more and more wilderness areas such as Long Canyon Creek in Boundary County. They use scare tactics such as destroying our endangered species, namely the wolves, grizzly bears, snail darters.