Idaho Wilderness Hearings

Statement:

Ms. Remaley. My name is Anne Remaley. I'm a teacher from Bonners Ferry, Idaho. My major concern in the wilderness issue is that we not make a hasty decision, and that we not be so presumptuous as to try to settle the wilderness issue once and for all. I feel that it is an ongoing decisionmaking process, and that we don't have to have the right to make decisions for future generations. I have two reasons for this: One is that I feel historically we haven't done a very good job of protecting future needs. In 1867 Secretary of State Seward spent $7 million on what everyone thought was a frozen wasteland. Today Alaska is one of our greatest assets. On the opposite side, I don't think we have done a very good job of protecting what consequences our land usage will have. We've washed topsoil from some of America's best farmlands, put dioxin on our roads and rendered communities uninhabitable—the list goes on and on. This is not just environmentalist dribble. These are cases listed in my paper which have been recognized by the Federal Government. We have always forged ahead with good economic and technological developments without really predicting the consequences. A second concern I have is why we are ignoring supply and demand. My research shows that there's a 17-year surplus of coal, a 3-year surplus of lumber, a surplus of oil, and that the population rate is declining. To me, this means that our demand will probably go down, and to ignore this seems really foolish to me. I have two recommendations. The first is that some land be established as permanent wilderness. The second is that the remaining land in question be established under a current wilderness status to be left untouched until resource needs demand its use. The status of this land could be reviewed every 10 to 20 years. I cannot justify using it unless it really is in demand in taking that right away from future generations. I feel that such determinations should be made by the people directly affected by the decision and not us, 20 or 30 or 40 years ahead of time.