Idaho Wilderness Hearings

Statement:

UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO Dr. Frome. Thank you, Senator. I am currently visiting associate professor of wildland recreation management at the College of Forestry of the University of Idaho. First I would like to express a word of appreciation to you for your personal and professional interest in forest wilderness. Certainly the very process of conducting this series of hearings will prove beneficial in illuminating and clarifying the values of wilderness and in identifying the location of wilderness areas worth saving in national forests here in Idaho. I would also like to say how pleased we are, Senator, that you will be with us at the first National Wilderness Management Workshop at Moscow in mid-October. You will be interested to learn of the enthusiastic response to our program and that we expect an attendance of more than 200 policymakers, wilderness managers, leaders of industry and environmental organizations from all parts of the country. For more than 20 years I have been a student of wilderness and forest policy, writing about them in books, magazine articles and columns, and in spoken presentations at symposiums and lectures before professional and university audiences. Often I've been asked: Well, how much is enough? With how much wilderness will you finally be satisfied? How much is enough? How much of the Nez Perce and Clearwater National Forests, with which we are specifically concerned today, can I logically recommend be allocated as wilderness? 513 But these should never be the questions, for wilderness cannot and should not be separated from scientific forest management based upon the principles of multiple use. Multiple use is a valid and a sound concept, a design to protect and perpetuate public forests, while utilizing their resources wisely in the interests of all the people. However, multiple use has not been practiced widely on our public forests. It is not being practiced today. The funding imbalance places the emphasis on commodity production. Among multiple uses, watershed protection, recreation and wildlife hold low priority. The National Forest Management Act of 1976 was intended to make multiple use work at last. That law called for equal consideration of all renewable resources in an optimal mix. However, timber production quotas, now called targets, are delivered to forest supervisors, who then transfer the burden to district rangers. Of course, there is a planning process, but it fails to deter or deflect the commitment to single-use production. Reasonable land stewardship includes the protection of soil, water quality, and fish and wildlife habitat. So declared F. Dale Robertson, now associate chief of the Forest Service, in 1974, when he was supervisor of the Siuslaw National Forest, following a period of logging abuse and resource degradation. Robertson pledged as follows: 'Short-term economics will not override long term needs of high quality land management.'