[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 115 (Wednesday, September 8, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10545-S10549]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE SENATE WILDERNESS AND PUBLIC LANDS CAUCUS
Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I rise to commemorate the 35th
anniversary of the Wilderness Act of 1964, which was signed into law on
September 3, 1964 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, and to announce the
formation of a Senate Wilderness and Public Lands Caucus. The
Wilderness Act became law seven years after the first wilderness bill
was introduced by Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota. The final
bill, sponsored by Senator Clinton Anderson of New Mexico, passed the
Senate by a vote of 73-12 on April 9, 1963, and passed the House of
Representatives by a vote of 373-1 on July 30, 1964. The Wilderness Act
of 1964 established a National Wilderness Preservation System ``to
secure for the American people of present and future generations the
benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness.''
The law reserves to Congress the authority to designate wilderness
areas, and directs the federal land management agencies to review the
lands under their responsibility for their wilderness potential.
The original Wilderness Act established 9.1 million acres of Forest
Service land in 54 wilderness areas. Now, after passage of 102 pieces
of legislation the wilderness system is comprised of over 104 million
acres in 625 wilderness areas, across 44 States, and administered by
four federal agencies: the Forest Service in the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, and the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife
Service, and the National Park Service in the Department of the
Interior.
As we in this body know well, the passage and enactment of
legislation of this type is a remarkable accomplishment. It requires
steady, bipartisan commitment, institutional support, and direct
leadership. The United States Senate was instrumental in shaping this
very important law, and this anniversary gives us the opportunity to
recognize this role. I am honored today to be joined on the floor by
one of the three Senators remaining in this body who have the
distinguished honor of having voted for this legislation, the Senior
Senator from West Virginia (Mr. Byrd). I look forward to his remarks at
the conclusion of my own. The Senior Senator from Massachusetts (Mr.
Kennedy) and the Senior Senator from Hawaii (Mr. Inouye), who also
voted for this legislation, have asked that their remarks regarding
this anniversary be included in the Record. Their remarks will also
appear in the Record together with my remarks on the Wilderness Act
anniversary.
In addition, I understand that the Ranking Member of the Energy
Committee (Mr. Bingaman) has a statement on the anniversary.
Under the Wilderness Act, wilderness is defined as ``an area of
undeveloped federal land retaining its primeval character and influence
which generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces
of nature, with the imprint of man's work substantially unnoticeable.''
The concept of the creation of a national wilderness system marked an
innovation in the American conservation movement--wilderness would be a
place where our ``management strategy'' would be to leave lands
essentially undeveloped.
Congress lavished more time and effort on the wilderness bill than
almost any other measure in conservation history. The original bill
established 9.1 million acres of federally protected wilderness in
national forests. From June 1957 until May 1964 there were nine
separate hearings on the proposal, collecting over six thousand pages
of testimony. The bill itself was modified and rewritten sixty-six
different times. Twenty different Senators made statements on the
legislation. Much of the delay in reaching a final version
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stemmed from the conflicts between the scope of the bill's restrictions
on mining, grazing, oil and other extractive activities on designated
wilderness areas and the need for the law to be flexible in the light
of pre-existing activities. The bill's supporters argued that the
measure gave legal sanction to the areas already being managed by the
Forest Service as primitive areas. More importantly, they successfully
argued that Congressional action was necessary because the wilderness
that exists is its own finite resource.
More than a century of development had brought greatly changed
conditions to both public and private lands throughout the country.
``If the year were 1857 instead of 1957,'' one supporter of the bill
wrote in the Living Wilderness, the Wilderness Society's newsletter,
``I'd say definitely no [to a wilderness bill]. But given the almost
total dominance of developed civilization, I am compelled to work for
saving the remnants of undeveloped land.'' I think those remarks apply
just as well to the state of our federal lands today, more than thirty-
five years later.
My interest in this law stems from the fact that Wisconsin has
produced great wilderness thinkers and leaders in the wilderness
movement such as Aldo Leopold, Sigurd Olsen, John Muir and former
Senator Gaylord Nelson. Senator Nelson was a co-sponsor of the
Wilderness Act of 1964, along with former Wisconsin Senator William
Proxmire. I am proud to now hold the Senate seat that Senator Nelson
held with distinction from 1963 to 1981. As a Senator from Wisconsin, I
have a special depth of feeling about this issue.
The testimony at Congressional hearings and the treatment of the bill
in the press of the day reveals Wisconsin's crucial role in the long
and continuing American debate about our wild places, and the
development of the Wilderness Act. The names and ideas of John Muir,
Sigurd Olson, and Aldo Leopold, especially Leopold, appear time and
time again in the legislative history.
Senator Clinton Anderson of New Mexico, chairman of what was then
called the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, stated that his
support of the wilderness system was the direct result of discussions
he had held almost forty years before with Leopold, who was then in the
Southwest with the Forest Service. It was Leopold who advocated, while
with the Forest Service, the creation of a primitive area in the Gila
National Forest in New Mexico in 1923. The Gila Primitive Area formally
became part of the wilderness system when the Wilderness Act became
law. In a statement in favor of the Wilderness Act in the New York
Times, then Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall discussed ecology
and what he called ``a land ethic'' and referred to Leopold as the
instigator of the modern wilderness movement. At a Senate hearing in
1961, David Brower of the Sierra Club went so far as to allege that
``no man who reads Leopold with an open mind will ever again, with a
clear conscience, be able to step up and testify against the wilderness
bill.''
For others, the ideas of Olson and Muir provided a justification for
the wilderness system, particularly that the country's strength depends
upon blending contact with the primitive into a civilized existence
because the frontier played such a central role in the our history.
Passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964 has not terminated the American
debate over the meaning, value and need to protect wild country. As I
mentioned, the wilderness system has dramatically expanded under both
Republican and Democratic leadership. The number of wildernesses
established and acres designated by each Congress has varied greatly
from year to year. There have been only nine individual years since
passage of the Wilderness Act when no wildernesses were designated, and
1965 to 1967 was the only period of three consecutive years in which no
wilderness legislation was passed by Congress. In 1984, during the
Reagan Administration, 175 wildernesses were established, more than
double any other year's addition. Despite the record number of new
wildernesses in 1984, the largest number of wilderness acres was
designated in 1980 with passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands
Conservation Act, which added over 56 million acres to the National
Wilderness Preservation System. Combined with other wilderness laws
passed that year, nearly 61 million acres of wilderness were designated
in 1980, more than 6 times the number of acres passed in any other
year.
Significant additions to the system continued up until 1994, when
Congress passed the California Desert Protection Act. Despite this
accomplishment, Congress has gotten out of the habit of passing
wilderness bills which protect our remaining wilderness-quality federal
lands. In the 105th Congress, the Senate's actions were much more
modest--we added about 160 acres to the Eagles Nest Wilderness in
Colorado.
However, Congress has much bolder bills before it, with bipartisan
support, such as the bills to designate 9.1 million acres in Utah and
the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as wilderness.
In addition, President Clinton proposed a new omnibus National Parks
wilderness bill in his State of the Union. We need to address these
measures, and to revitalize the tradition of statewide and state
delegation led wilderness bills.
In order to get the Senate in a position to act on wilderness issues,
I hope to raise awareness of the importance of wilderness in the
Senate. I have been working to organize a Wilderness and Public Lands
Caucus that will help the Senate to renew its bipartisan commitment to
the active protection of wilderness and public lands. Today I am
delighted to announce that Senator McCain, Senator Durbin, Senator
Feinstein, Senator Murray, and Senator Bayh will be joining me in this
effort. I encourage any member of the Senate interested in learning
about and working on these issues to join our caucus, and I am grateful
to these members who are willing to lend their time and leadership.
I feel it is time to promote and re-develop expertise on these issues
in the Senate. In the early days of the Wilderness Act many Senators
had expertise on these issues, and ad hoc coalitions formed to pass
large bills with provisions for a number of states. However, now that
the Senate has lost its zeal for the continuing work of identifying and
designating wilderness areas this expertise has dwindled. Without a new
dedication to re-building this expertise, wilderness and public lands
issues will remain increasingly divisive, despite a resurgent public
interest in our wilderness and an increased public desire for Congress
to extend additional protection to federal lands of wilderness quality.
I intend for the caucus to meet as necessary during each Senate
session in pursuit of several objectives:
To assist members in defending existing wilderness areas, and other
federal land resources already protected in the public trust, from
activities that have the potential to significantly affect the
qualities for which they were designated.
To support and provide advice to members seeking opportunities to
designate new wilderness areas.
To provide members with a bipartisan forum in which to discuss
wilderness and other public land protection and management issues and
learn from others' expertise.
To educate members about the Wilderness Act and other federal land
management statutes, and to improve understanding of the appropriate
uses of various federal land management designations and the federal
financial and management requirements needed to implement them.
Mr. President, many would agree that more must be done to protect our
wild places. One of the things that needs to be done, particularly on
the cusp of the Millennium, is to examine and improve the ability of
this body to understand and grapple with these issues in the public
interest. This is a great institution, with a strong conservation
history, which has produced the Wilderness Act, one of the gems of
conservation law. I am actively committing to working on wilderness
issues because I believe it to be in the Wisconsin tradition, and, as a
Senator, I am trying to use the tools I have been given by the people
of Wisconsin to build the leadership needed to defend these places.
In conclusion, I would like to remind colleagues of the words of Aldo
Leopold in his 1949 book, A Sand County Almanac. He said, ``The
outstanding scientific discovery of the Twentieth Century is not the
television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism.
Only those who know the most
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about it can appreciate how little is known about it.'' We still have
much to learn, but this anniversary of the Wilderness Act reminds us
how far we have come and how powerful a collegial commitment to public
lands can be in the Senate.
I am very pleased and honored to be able to yield the remainder of my
time to one of the three Senators who is here to vote for this
legislation, the senior Senator from West Virginia, Mr. Byrd.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia is recognized.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I thank the Chair.
Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Wisconsin, Senator Feingold,
for bringing us together today to celebrate the passage of the
Wilderness Act of 1964. Too often, the pressing events of the day
prevent us from remembering so many important pieces of legislation. I
am happy that we are able to take a moment to recognize a historic
piece of legislation.
Let me begin with a look backward over the well-traveled road of
history. It is only fitting that we turn our faces backward so that we
might be better informed and prepared to deal with future events. On a
whole range of important issues, the Senate has always been blessed
with Senators who were able to rise above political parties, and
consider first and foremost the national interest. There are many
worthy examples throughout the Senate's history.
My friend and former colleague, Senator Mike Mansfield, and other
distinguished Members of the Senate understood this point well.
Political polarization, a simple zero-sum strategy by one party to
achieve a short-lived victory which demonizing the other party, is not
now, and has never been, a good thing for the Senate. I know that
Americans have always loved a good debate. I believe that this is one
of the lessons that we can take from the passage of the Wilderness Act
of 1964. Members on both sides of the issue focused on the more
substantive and stimulating policy challenges rather than allowing pure
politics and imagery to enter into the fray.
The debate on the Wilderness Act of 1964 serves as a great example of
the Senate's charge in taking a leadership role and working over the
long term to pass historic pieces of legislation. I believe the bill's
chief sponsor, Senator Clinton Anderson from New Mexico, understood
this point well when he said, upon consideration of the conference
report, on August 20, 1964:
What we have done we have done not only to meet the urgency
of the moment, but for the future. In no area has this
Congress more decisively served the future well-being of the
Nation that in passing legislation to conserve natural
resources and to provide the means by which our people could
enjoy them. One of the brightest stars in the constellation
of conservation measures is the wilderness bill * * *. The
path of the wilderness legislation through Congress has
sometimes been as rugged as the forests and mountains
embraced by the wilderness system.
The Senate understood there was a need to protect America's unique
places, and Members worked to craft a proposal over a number of years
that could achieve that end. Senator George McGovern, another key
supporter of the Wilderness Act, observed:
I think each of us has been enriched at one time or another
through our experiences with natural undisturbed areas of the
country * * * its comparatively uncluttered open spaces, its
lakes and woods, have special appreciation for the purpose of
the wilderness preservation system. As the population of our
country grows and as our city areas become more contested, it
is all the more imperative that we look to the preservation
of great primitive outdoor areas where people can go for
recreational and inspirational experience.
The U.S. population has since grown by more than 70 percent since the
Wilderness Act of 1964 was enacted. In addition to land preservation,
the act has encouraged the discovery of America's history, promoted
recreation, provided for its diverse wildlife and ecosystems, and
satisfied people's urge for solace and a return to wild places. The
definition of wilderness according to the act is ``an area where the
earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man
himself is a visitor who does not remain.'' Initially endowed with 9.1
million acres of public lands, the wilderness system today encompasses
more than 104 million acres in forty-four States.
My home state of West Virginia remains wild and wonderful because of
Congress' actions. Covered from end to end by the ancient Appalachian
Mountains, West Virginia remains, to me, one of the most beautiful one
of the most unique of all places and I have seen lot of places
throughout the world in my time. It is the most southern of the
northern States and the most northern of the Southern states; the most
eastern of the Western States and the most western of the eastern
States; where the east says good morning to the west, and where Yankee
Doodle and Dixie kiss each other good night. The luscious mountains
gently roll across that land, providing an elegant sense of mystery to
the landscape. The wilderness of my State has given West Virginians a
freedom to explore. This freedom has been secured and protected so that
future generations--like my baby granddaughter, her children, and her
children's children--will be able to say Montani Semper Liberi,
Mountaineers are always free!
Four wilderness areas have been designated in West Virginia since the
1964 act. Each area captures and preserves uniquely a beautiful aspect
of a State that has, I believe, more than its fair share of native
loveliness. God must have been in a spendthrift mood when he made West
Virginia!
In the Otter Creek Wilderness Area, consisting of 20,000 acres so
designated in 1975, you can follow the same twisting trails that early
settlers to the area wove through the dense forest. Amid the stands of
towering White Oaks, dark hickory, and ghostly poplar trees, you may
discover stunted groves of apple trees, remnants of an early settler's
orchard. Maybe Johnny Appleseed came that way.
Also designated in 1975, the Dolly Sods Wilderness Area preserves
10,000 acres of Canada that somehow migrated south and chose to settle
in West Virginia. Heath thickets, bogs, and low-growing evergreens
combine to establish a wide open feeling akin to more northerly climes
such as those of Minnesota. Offering scenic vistas, Dolly Sods is a
famed spot in which to enjoy hiking, camping, fishing, and nature
watching.
The Cranberry Wilderness Area proves the regenerative power of
nature. Its 35,864 acres were logged in the early part of this century,
with the valuable timber shipped by steam locomotives to a mill in
Richwood. It also suffered severe wildfires which raged over much of
the area. In order to restore it to its natural condition, the Forest
Service purchased the land in 1934--the year I graduated from high
school. Now grown into a mature forest, the Cranberry Wilderness Area
received its official designation in 1983.
Consisting of more than 12,000 acres, Laurel Fork Wilderness Area was
once a profitable source of lumber at the beginning of the century.
Laurel Fork has since been preserved and is a source of the Cheat
River. Designated in 1983, Laurel Fork Wilderness has a wide blend of
wildlife and foliage special to Appalachia. Among the Birch, Beech, and
Maple trees which grow in the area, live the native species of West
Virginia such as white-tail deer, wild turkey, bobcat, and even black
bear.
I might note that perhaps one of the most majestic of wildlife
species protected by these wilderness areas throughout the U.S. is the
bald eagle. Symbolizing America's freedom and strength, the bald eagle,
in fact, has been recently removed from the endangered species list,
and will continue to soar for future generations of Americans.
The Wilderness Act of 1964 enabled West Virginians to preserve the
natural beauty of their State for themselves and for the nation * * *
now and forever. I believe that Senator Anderson summarized it best
when he said:
Deep down inside of most Americans is a love of the out-of-
doors. * * * It is an effort to protect and preserve,
unspoiled, just a little bit of the vast wilderness which
stretched ocean to ocean on this continent less than 300
years ago, so that this love of the great, unspoiled, out-of-
doors which is a part of us can be gratified.
I would like to take a moment to recognize a number of former
colleagues who took a leadership role in passing the Wilderness Act of
1964. Many of them were fairly close friends of mine. There was Senator
Anderson, whose name I have spoken earlier, Thomas
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Kuchel, Hubert Humphrey, Henry Jackson, Frank Church, Frank Lausche,
Paul Douglas, Harrison Williams, Jennings Randolph--my former colleague
from West Virginia--Joseph Clark, William Proxmire, Maurine Neuberger,
Lee Metcalf, George McGovern, David Nelson--they took a leadership role
in guiding this piece of legislation through the Senate. The Senate has
considered many thousands of pieces of legislation on a myriad of
topics over the last several years. I am proud to stand here today and
say that this piece of legislation, the Wilderness Act of 1964, stands
as a great example of what this body can accomplish when it sets its
collective mind to it. These were the sponsors of the Wilderness Act in
the 88th Congress.
In closing, I want to welcome my colleagues back from the prairies
and the plains, the mountains and the hollows and the hills, the broad
valleys. We have much work to do in these coming weeks and we can learn
much from the Wilderness Act of 1964 and the dedication and commitment
of those Senators who worked to fulfill their vision by enacting that
great piece of legislation, their vision of a future continent which
would be preserved for the men and women who would come after them.
Far too often these days, we get caught up in the partisan wranglings
of tax cuts, educational needs, national security demands, Social
Security changes, health care reform, and much, much more--all of which
subjects are extremely important. The public has become concerned about
what it is that we actually do in this Chamber. In reflecting upon the
Wilderness Act of 1964, I find a great example of what this body can
achieve when it puts its whole mind and its whole spirit into it. Again
I thank my colleague for his kindness in inviting me to participate
here this afternoon in recalling our footsteps down the long hall of
memories.
In closing, I am reminded of the words of one of America's foremost
conservationists and outdoorsman, John Muir--
Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, inciting
at once to work and rest! Days in whose light everything
seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us
God. Nevermore, however weary, should one faint by the way
who gains the blessing of one mountain day: whatever his
fate, long life, short life, stormy or calm, he is rich
forever. . . . I only went out for a walk, and finally
concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found,
was going in. One touch of nature . . . makes all the world
kin.
I yield the floor.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, it is an honor to join my colleagues in
commemorating this impressive anniversary of the Wilderness Act of
1964. Thirty-five years ago, Congress passed this benchmark
legislation, which has opened the door for extensive new protections of
wilderness areas throughout the nation.
In 1924, the U.S. Forest Service named the Gila National Forest in
New Mexico as the first wilderness area. As years passed, it became
increasingly clear that a more comprehensive strategy of protection for
these priceless areas was needed. Between 1957 and 1964, nine
congressional hearings were held, resulting in sixty-six rewrites of
the original bill. This enormous amount of attention can be credited to
the strong grassroots support for preserving these magnificent
resources. As a result, Congress passed the Wilderness Act. It was
signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on September 3, 1964, and
established over nine million acres of wilderness areas throughout the
country.
The act defined wilderness as ``an area where the earth and its
community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a
visitor who does not remain.'' Although sharply restricting human
activities in these areas, the Act also paid tribute to a piece of our
national identity. To Americans, the wilderness is a place to
rediscover what it means to be American. As Supreme Court Justice
William O. Douglas once noted, ``Roadless areas are one pledge of
freedom.'' From the time of the first settlers, the nation's wilderness
areas have been symbols of freedom and human ingenuity that
characterize the American dream.
In his classic work, Wilderness and the American Mind, Roderick Nash
observed the close relationship between our citizens and such areas,
stating ``Take away wilderness and you take away the opportunity to be
American.'' The Wilderness Act has protected these priceless
undeveloped areas, and it has preserved these magnificent resources for
our time and for all time.
Since this law was enacted, Congress has created over six hundred
wilderness areas, totaling more than one hundred million acres in
states across our nation. These are areas that cannot be developed or
destroyed, but will retain the original splendor of their natural
beauty.
It was a special privilege for me to support the Wilderness Act in
1964, as one of the most far-reaching actions by Congress to preserve
our environmental heritage. All of us take pride in the many beautiful
areas designated under the Act.
Finally, I commend all those who have done so much to uphold the
great tradition of the Wilderness Act, by working in the agencies that
are committed to protecting the nation's wilderness. As the act itself
so eloquently states, they continue to ``secure for the American people
of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource
of wilderness.''
Mr. INOUYE. Mr President, it is a pleasure to have this opportunity
to speak on the 35th anniversary of the Wilderness Act of 1964 and on
the establishment of the National Wilderness Preservation System.
When the Wilderness Act was being debated on the Senate floor in
1963, I was a freshman Senator. Following Hawaii's admission to the
union in 1959, I served one partial and one full term in the House of
Representatives and then was elected to the Senate in 1962. So, in
early April of 1963, I was a 39-year-old freshman Senator in the first
year of my first term in the Senate.
The Wilderness Act, however, was not new to the Senate when it came
to the floor in April 1963. The first wilderness proposal was
introduced late in the 84th Congress in 1956. Following extensive
hearings, testimony, debate and revisions, a wilderness bill was passed
by a wide margin in the Senate on September 6, 1961. However, it was
not until my freshman year in the Senate that we passed a wilderness
bill that ultimately went on to become law the next year in 1964.
Just prior to the vote in the Senate on April 9, 1963, one of the
floor managers of the bill, the Honorable Frank Church of Idaho, said,
``the Senate is about to vote on the question of the passage of a bill
which, if enacted into law, will be regarded as one of the great
landmarks in the history of conservation.'' You can imagine the effect
of such far reaching and nationally significant discourse on a young
man from a new state in the middle of the Pacific.
I have been around for a while. Yesterday was my 75th birthday. But I
am not so jaded as to have lost sight of the important principles upon
which the Wilderness Act was founded.
The bill was ultimately signed into law on September 3, 1964. To me,
it seems like just yesterday, but a lot has happened since then. The
Wilderness system was originally endowed with 9.1 million acres of
national forest lands. In 35 years, that has grown to more than 104
million acres managed by four federal land management agencies.
Hawaii, obviously a very small State, has just 142,370 acres of
federally designated wilderness area. This is about 1/10 of 1% of the
total designated wilderness area in the country. However, let me tell
you about Hawaii's wilderness and other natural areas.
Hawaii is the only State with bona fide tropical rain forest.
Although over half of Hawaii's original native rain forest has been
lost or replaced by introduced species, planted landscapes, or
development, a great deal remains. Perhaps 3/4 of a million acres of
rain forest is left in Hawaii.
Rain forest is just the start, however. There are actually about 150
distinct ecosystem types in Hawaii. These ecosystems are so distinctive
that the Hawaiian Islands constitute a unique global bio-region. These
ecosystems range from 14,000-foot snowy alpine deserts, to subterranean
lava tube systems with eyeless creatures, to windswept coastal dunes.
All told, perhaps half of the 150 ecosystem types in Hawaii are
considered in trouble, imperilled by human-related changes in the
landscape. Most of the loss has occurred along the coasts
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and in the lowlands, where the majority of human habitation exists
today.
Hawaii is also considered to be the extinction capital of the United
States. About 90% of Hawaii's native plants and animals occur nowhere
else in the world, and nearly 1000 different kinds of Hawaiian plants
and animals are threatened by extinction. Approximately 75% of the
recorded extinctions in the United States are from Hawaii. Also, about
40% of the birds and 30% of the plants presently on the U.S. endangered
species list are native to Hawaii.
One of Hawaii's federal wilderness areas is the 19,270-acre Haleakala
Wilderness Area on the Island of Maui, which was designated in 1976.
This area is part of the 28,655-acre Haleakala National Park. During
the August recess, I participated in the dedication of 1,500 acres of
pristine tropical habitat, which was added to Haleakala National Park
thanks to the support of my Congressional colleagues who approved funds
last year for its acquisition. So, Haleakala continues to grow.
The major feature of this park is the dormant, though not extinct,
Mount Haleakala and its volcanic crater within. Stretching from an
elevation of 10,000 feet to the sea, the park also includes unrivaled
native forest and stream habitat, and abundant Native Hawaiian
historical and cultural features.
The other Federal wilderness area is the 123,100-acre Hawaii
Volcanoes Wilderness Area, which is part of the larger 230,000-acre
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island of Hawaii. This park,
established in 1916, displays the results of 70 million years of
volcanism and rises from sea level to the summit of the earth's most
massive volcano, Mauna Loa at 13,677 feet.
Within the park is the world's most active volcano, Kilauea, which
offers scientists insights into the birth of our planet and visitors
views of dramatic volcanic landscapes. Molten lava from the Puu Oo
vent, on the flank of Kilauea volcano, flows seven miles through a lava
tube to the coast where it enters the ocean, causing the sea to
actually boil. Volume of flow averages about 400,000 cubic meters per
day continuously adding new land to the island. 1999 is 16th year of
this ongoing eruption of Kilauea.
More than just these designated federal wilderness areas, Hawaii has
a total of 270,000 acres in the national park system; 35,000 acres in
federal fish and wildlife refuges; and 109,000 acres in state natural
area reserves. Added to this are other areas managed privately for
conservation purposes, including approximately 25,000 acres managed by
The Nature Conservancy of Hawaii.
Wilderness is defined in the law as areas ``where the earth and its
community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a
visitor who does not remain.'' With all of the unique and imperilled
species and habitat in Hawaii, I certainly understand the value of
protecting our wild and natural areas, whatever the definition might
be.
The message that I would like to leave with my colleagues as we think
about the 35th anniversary of the Wilderness Act is that we all wish to
be environmentalists. We often differ on the details of
environmentalism; sometimes greatly. Some of the most impassioned
discussions in this body have to do with environmental issues. Some of
us do not receive the highest score from the League of Conservation
Voters. However, I do not think any of my colleagues would say that
environmental conservation is a frivolous pursuit. It is merely a
question of degree.
So where does that leave us? I know we will continue to debate so-
called anti-environmental riders, the future of the Endangered Species
Act, and maybe even reforms to the 35-year-old Wilderness Act. But let
us not close our minds to our perceived adversaries, nor lose sight of
what I believe we all agree upon.
Our natural environment is a finite resource that needs to be
protected and nurtured for generations to come. There are no simple
solutions, but with this common goal in mind, we will make progress.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent I be permitted to
speak up to 15 minutes as in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
____________________