Idaho Wilderness Hearings

Statement:

Ms. Trick. Hello. I'm 36 years old, and healthy, and capable of visiting the wilderness areas. And I like the outdoors. But as far as I can remember, I have never visited a designated wilderness area in the United States. Although, statistically, I should be one of those citizens that may be often cited as being indifferent toward wilderness since I've never been there. I'd like to speak for myself as being one of those who has not been to a wilderness and what do we have to say. I live in Sandpoint, Idaho. And I've often taken walks behind my house in the forested hills. As I hike along the many logging roads crisscrossing the whole area, I try to imagine what those hillsides looked like before they were ever altered by man, before the big, tall cedars and bull pines were cut. And I can see the old rotting stumps there so I know how big the trees were at one time. My imagination takes me through dark, cool cedar groves and through the territory of my neighbor, the grizzly bear. I will never find that imaginative forest or that grizzly bear in my backyard. But I know that I can still see them by going to Long Canyon or Salmo-Priest. And even though I have not yet visited a wilderness area, just knowing there are still a few relatively pristine places is a great comfort to me. We should always remember that man's incredible ingenuity enables him to alter in just a few minutes or days what took hundreds of years to create. If you want to permanently change the natural order by using the resources it offers, I think we should make darn sure we need them. Because once we change them, they cannot be restored to their original state within our lifetimes. I believe we have already lost too much of our wilderness long, long ago. Two hundred years ago. And in my opinion, Senator McClure, you cannot put enough wilderness into this bill. I ask you to include as much as you possibly can. And I support the Endangered Idaho Wilderness Core and I strongly oppose hard release language.