[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 135 (Thursday, October 7, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12251-S12252]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        WILDERNESS DESIGNATIONS

 Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, given the recent creation of the 
Wilderness and Public Lands Caucus and the ongoing debate on public 
land management, I think that all views on this complicated and 
emotional issue are vital to the discussion. Therefore, I ask that a 
brief statement from the Wilderness Act Reform Coalition, a group from 
my home State of Idaho be printed in the Record for all Senators to 
read and consider.
  The article follows:

                  The Wilderness Act Reform Coalition


                         Why we are organizing

       September 3, 1999 marks the 35th anniversary of the passage 
     of the Wilderness Act. During those 35 years, it has never 
     been substantively amended. Yet, the history of the 
     application of the Wilderness Act to the public's lands and 
     resources provides overwhelming evidence that it must be 
     significantly reformed if the public interest is to be 
     served.
       September 3, 1999 also marks the launch of the Wilderness 
     Act Reform Coalition (WARC), the first serious effort to 
     reform this antiquated and poorly-conceived law. Much has 
     changed since the Wilderness Act became law in 1964. Dozens 
     of other laws have been passed since then to protect and 
     responsibly-manage all of the public's lands and resources. 
     Underpinning all of these laws--and guaranteeing their 
     enforcement--is a public sensitivity and commitment to wise 
     resource management which was not present two generations ago 
     when the Wilderness Act was enacted.
       Over this same time period our knowledge and understanding 
     of how to accomplish this kind of wise and responsible 
     resource management has increased exponentially. The demand 
     side of the public's interest in their lands and resources 
     has also increased exponentially. Recreation demand, for 
     example, has increased far beyond what anyone could have 
     anticipated 35 years ago and it has done so in directions 
     which could not have been foreseen in 1964. Demand for water, 
     energy and minerals, timber and other resources continues to 
     go up as well.
       All of this means that as the 21st Century dawns we find 
     ourselves facing more complex natural resources realities and 
     challenges than ever before in our history. Meeting these 
     challenges while at the same time serving the broad public 
     interest will require careful and thoughtful balancing of all 
     resource values with other social goals. It will also require 
     integrating them all into a comprehensive management approach 
     which will provide the greatest good for the greatest number 
     of Americans over the longest period of time.
       These lands and resources, after all, belong to all of the 
     American people. They deserve to enjoy the maximum benefits 
     from them. Yet, the Wilderness Act, with its outdated, 
     inflexible, and anti-management requirements, presently locks 
     away over 100 million acres of the public's lands and 
     resources from this kind of intelligent and integrated 
     resource management. The inevitable result is the numerous 
     negative impacts and damage to other resource values which 
     are becoming increasingly apparent on the public's lands. The 
     Wilderness Act remains frozen in another era. Due to the 
     exponential changes which have occurred since it was passed, 
     that era lies much further in the past than a mere 35 year 
     linear time line would suggest.


                        Our goals and objectives

       The Wilderness Act Reform Coalition is being organized by 
     members of citizen's groups and local government officials 
     who have experienced firsthand the limitations and problems 
     the Wilderness Act has caused. It has a simple mission: to 
     reform the Wilderness Act. In carrying out that mission, the 
     Coalition has identified two primary goals towards which it 
     will initially work.
       The first goal is to make those changes in the wilderness 
     law which are essential to mitigate the most serious resource 
     and related problems it is causing. These problems range from 
     prohibiting the application of sound resource management 
     practices where needed to hampering important scientific 
     research and jeopardizing our national defense.
       The second goal of the coalition is to use the failings of 
     the Wilderness Act to help educate the public, the media and 
     policy makers on the fundamentals of natural resource 
     management. Most of the ``conventional wisdom'' about natural 
     resource management to which most of them presently subscribe 
     is simply wrong. It is essential that the public be better 
     educated on the facts, the realities, the challenges and the 
     options before there can be any responsible or useful policy 
     debate on the most fundamental problems with the Wilderness 
     Act or, for that matter, any of the other federal management 
     laws and policies which also need to be reformed. That is why 
     the Coalition has chosen a comparatively limited reform 
     agenda for this opening round in what we recognize ultimately 
     must be a broader and more comprehensive national policy 
     debate.


                           Our reform agenda

       The Coalition currently advocates the following reforms of 
     the Wilderness Act:
       1. Developing a mechanism to permit active resource 
     management in wilderness areas to achieve a wide range of 
     public benefits and to respond to local needs. The inability 
     or unwillingness of managers to intervene actively within 
     wilderness areas to deal with local resource management 
     problems or goals has resulted in economic harm to local 
     communities and damage to other important natural resource 
     and related values and objectives. The Coalition supports the 
     creation of committees composed of locally-based federal and 
     state resource managers, local governments, local economic 
     interests and local citizens which will initiate a process to 
     override the basic non-management directive of the Wilderness 
     Act on a case-by-case basis.
       2. Establishing a mechanism for appeal and override of 
     local managers for scientific research. Wilderness advocates 
     often tout the importance of wilderness designation to 
     science. The reality, however, is that agency regulations 
     make it difficult or impossible to conduct many scientific 
     experiments in wilderness, particularly with modern and cost-
     effective scientific tools. Important scientific experiments 
     have been opposed simply because they would take place 
     within wilderness areas. A simple, quick and cheap appeal 
     process must be created for scientists turned down by 
     wilderness land managers.
       3. Making it clear that such things as use of mechanized 
     equipment and aircraft landings can occur in wilderness areas 
     for search and rescue or law enforcement purposes. There have 
     been incidents where these have been prevented by federal 
     wilderness managers.
       4. Requiring that federal managers use the most cost-
     effective management tools and technologies. These managers 
     have largely imposed upon themselves a requirement that they 
     use the ``least tool'' or the ``minimum tool'' to accomplish 
     tasks such as noxious weed control, wildfire control or 
     stabilization of historic sites. In practice, this means that 
     hand tools are often used instead of power tools, horses are 
     employed instead of helicopters and similar practices which 
     waste tax dollars.
       5. Clarifying that the prohibition on the use of mechanized 
     transportation in wilderness areas refers only to intentional 
     infractions. This would be, in effect, the ``Bobby Unser 
     Amendment'' designed to prevent in the future the current 
     situation in which he is being prosecuted by the federal 
     government for possibly driving a snowmobile into a 
     wilderness area in Colorado while lost in a life-threatening 
     blizzard.
       6. Pulling the boundaries of wilderness areas and 
     wilderness study areas (WSA's) back from roads and 
     prohibiting ``cherrystemming.'' In many cases, the boundaries 
     of wilderness areas and WSA's come right to the very edge of 
     a road. Lawsuits have been filed or threatened against 
     counties for going literally only a few feet into a WSA when 
     doing necessary road maintenance work. It is clearly 
     impossible to have a wilderness recreational experience in 
     close proximity of a road. When formal wilderness areas are 
     designated, the current practice is to pull the boundaries 
     back a short distance from roads, depending on how the roads 
     are categorized. That distance should be standardized and 
     extended, probably to at least a quarter of a mile. The 
     practice of ``cherrystemming,'' or drawing wilderness 
     boundaries right along both sides of a road to its end, 
     sometimes for many miles, is a clear violation of the intent 
     of the Wilderness Act that wilderness areas must first and 
     foremost be roadless. It must be eliminated.
       7. Permitting certain human-powered but non-motorized 
     mechanized transport devices in wilderness areas. This would 
     include mountain bikes and wheeled ``game carriers'' and 
     similar devices. The explosion of mountain biking was not 
     envisioned by the Congress when the Wilderness Act was 
     passed.

[[Page S12252]]

     Opening up those wilderness areas which are suitable to 
     mountain biking would provide a high quality recreation 
     experience to more of the Americans who own these areas. Use 
     of these human-powered conveyances would also reduce pressure 
     on these areas in a number of ways, such as by dispersing 
     recreation use over a wider area. At the same time opening 
     these areas can also reduce the current or potential 
     conflicts between various recreation uses on land outside 
     of designated wilderness. The impact on the land from 
     these types of mechanized recreation uses would be minimal 
     to non-existent. Their presence in wilderness areas would 
     not cause problems on aesthetic grounds for any but the 
     most extreme wilderness purists and they represent only a 
     tiny fraction of the Americans who own these lands.
       8. Requiring that the resource potential in all WSA's and 
     any other land proposed for wilderness be updated at least 
     every ten years. For example, mineral surveys and estimates 
     of oil and gas potential completed on many of the WSA's on 
     BLM-managed land which have been recommended for wilderness 
     designation are now 10 to 15 years old and in some cases even 
     older. These reviews were often not very thorough even by the 
     standards and technology available then, much less what is 
     available now. Before any additional land is locked up in 
     wilderness, Congress and the American people should at least 
     have the best and most up-to-date information on which to 
     weigh the resource trade offs and make decisions.
       9. Stating clearly that wilderness designation or the 
     presence of WSA's cannot interfere with military 
     preparedness. In a number of instances, conflicts related to 
     military overflights of designated or potential wilderness 
     areas, or to the positioning of essential military equipment 
     on the ground in these areas, poses a threat or a potential 
     threat to our defense preparedness. The Coalition will push 
     for clarification that when considering the impacts of any 
     mission certified by the military as essential to the 
     national defense, wilderness areas or WSA's will be treated 
     exactly the same as any other land administered by that 
     agency.
       10. Clarifying that wilderness designation or WSA 
     designation will not in and of itself result in any 
     management or regulatory changes outside the wilderness or 
     WSA boundaries. This change is essential to prohibit federal 
     agencies or the courts from taking actions to impose any type 
     of ``buffer zones'' around these areas, including such things 
     as special management of ``viewsheds'' or asserting 
     wilderness-based water rights.

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