Idaho Wilderness Hearings

Statement:

PALOUSE GROUP, SIERRA CLUB Mr. Wise. Senator McClure, I'm Ron Wise. I'm from Pullman, Wash. And I'm representing the Palouse group of the Sierra Club, which is in this area. I want to thank you for this opportunity to present our views to you on this question of wilderness in Idaho. The Palouse group is one of a number of environmental groups in Idaho that are involved in determining those areas which we feel should be classified as wilderness. As you know, we will have our recommendations to you some time in October. One area that's of particular interest to me personally that I'd like to mention here today is the area in the Saint Joe National Forest that's called Grandmother Mountain. Most of us locally refer to it as Marble Creek because that is the stream that is the center part of this area. I was attracted to this area about 18 years ago by the outstanding fly fishing I encountered there. During these years, the fishing has ranged from excellent to terrible. In addition to fishing, I have hiked and backpacked the entire upper 12 miles. According to local legend, there are some beaver ponds with large cutthroat trout in them. And like the pot of gold under the rainbow, the beaver ponds and lunker trout continue to allude me. One of the problems with managing this area is that the local—the valley reaches are managed by the Forest Service— owned by the Forest Service and the upper reaches—ridges by the BLM. And so we have a problem there—a potential problem with mixed management. And then, furthermore, we have some inhold—private inholdings. And I understand that there is a case before the Forest Service—a proposal to build a road into one of these inholdings. So that's another problem. The thing that makes this area unique in my mind—and I think I'm speaking for a number of people in the area because I've talked to people in Moscow, for example, that said, 'I own Marble Creek.' They feel very possessive about it. It's only 75 miles from Moscow. And you have a true wilderness experience in about a 2 hours' drive. And that's really something, I think, for this area because otherwise you have a lot further to go. We feel that wilderness is multiple use. Timber people frequently say, well, we'll lock up this land into wilderness. That's its single use. And we would like to disagree with that very strongly that wilderness is multiple use. There are many uses involved in wilderness. And I would like to suggest that perhaps logging is a more single use than wilderness itself is. I'd like to suggest that if we should ever be on the side of creating too much wilderness, Congress could certainly change this in the future. If we error on the 594 side of not enough wilderness, then we're going to have to wait several hundred years for the land to regenerate. I would like to conclude my remarks by suggesting that Idaho's wilderness is a national asset.