Idaho Wilderness Hearings

Statement:

Mr. Gehrke. Thank you, Mr. Senator. My name is Craig Gehrke. I'd like to address my remarks to the Mallard-Larkins area and the Great Burn proposed wilderness. I've been to these areas. And I know they mostly consist of steep breaklands and canyons. I'm employed on one of the national forests in Idaho. And part of my job has been to go around and evaluate the tree plantations and to check the seedling establishments. And I know for a fact if these—this land is logged, it's going to be next to impossible to reestablish any timber on the steep slopes. Steep slopes represent the most impossible conditions to get trees going again. Therefore, the cut up there would be one cut. The road would be single purpose. My education and experience taught me that trees are a renewable resource and when they are not renewable, they shouldn't be harvested. I'm not insensitive to the demand for timber in Idaho. But I'd like to stress—and I included a newspaper article with my testimony—that the timber demand is much more important than the supply. Last Friday an article ran in the Lewiston Morning Tribune saying that the timber recovery has been slowed down by a lack of demand again. We've just come out of a recession where the timber products were not in demand. This recession was not a func tion of the supply of timber, nor will the wilderness system be a function to affect that supply. Demand has much more to do with it. You can take a short drive between headquarters and the North Fork of the Clearwater and see acres and acres of private land, much more productive land, which is much more suited to harvesting timber. Those acres are waiting to be reforested. They're not being reforested because right now it's cheaper to log on Federal land where the taxpayers are subsidizing road building than it is to go and reforest that private land. It seems to me that this is the classic western tradition of cut and run. We classically move on to the next hill where the resources of the hill aren't depleted. I'd like to submit that we've run out of hills in Idaho. And it's time to start managing our productive west for timber production. Research by the Forest Service and others indicate that the demand in the United States for timber can't be met if lands are already accessed. More productive lands are reforested. Finally, I'd like to talk about soft release for a minute. And like I said, I'm a land manager. A few years down the road I'd like to have the opportunity to decide whether or not the lands can be considered for wilderness. I think that wilderness classifications should remain part of forest planning for now in generations. We don't know enough right now to decide what area will be wilderness and what area won't be. Thank you.