[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 107 (Friday, July 18, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1537]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 
                                  2004

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                         HON. JAMES L. OBERSTAR


                              of minnesota

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, July 17, 2003

       The House in Committee of the Whole House on the State of 
     the Union had under consideration the bill (H.R. 2691) making 
     appropriations for the Department of the Interior and related 
     agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2004, and 
     for other purposes:

  Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment 
offered by the gentleman from Washington, Mr. Inslee, on the roadless 
rule. We have debated this general issue repeatedly in this chamber 
over a number of years. Amendments have been offered by well-
intentioned members who are not informed about the specifics of the 
highly diverse units of the national forest system and the unique 
circumstances which characterize access in each of those forests, as 
well as the composition of the forestry resources in each unit.
  The Superior and Chippewa National Forests, which are located in my 
congressional district, have undergone extensive study, review, 
adjustment in status and addition of acreage to roadless or not-cut 
status. Over the last forty years, these two national forest units, 
which represent well over 3.6 million acres of federal lands, have been 
subjected to the Wilderness Act of 1964, the RARE I and RARE II 
inventories, the old growth inventory, the passage of the Boundary 
Waters Canoe Area Wilderness Act of 1978, the result of which, in each 
case, has been removal from timber harvesting of tens of thousands of 
acres of forested land to be reserved for wilderness status, protected 
from timber harvesting and in which motorized travel is precluded in 
all but a very few instances.
  In the aftermath of these actions to remove vast acreages from timber 
harvesting, and in light of management plans that the U.S. Forest 
Service is required to produce every five years, each of which has 
resulted in reduction of the allowable timber harvest, or some further 
complete withdrawal of land from timber harvesting, I see no need 
arbitrarily in the context of this straight jacket-like approach to 
which we are limited in the appropriation process, to impose further 
restrictions in a one-size-fits-all process.
  Furthermore, the mapping required of these public lands has not been 
fully accurate, as evidenced in a ruling just this week by the U.S. 
Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, situated in Wyoming, that the 
maps produced by the Forest Service were flawed, the process was rushed 
and the end result wrong. The court found that in developing the rule: 
``The Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act and 
the Wilderness Act.'' The court further found that the promulgated rule 
was an ``aggrandizement of power by the Forest Service in violation of 
an unequivocal Act of Congress and the United States Constitution.''
  I can assure my colleagues that, in the Superior and Chippewa 
National Forests, there are well over a million acres devoted to 
wilderness, vast areas for those who seek solitude and the restorative 
quality of the water and lands set aside from mechanized intrusion. 
Furthermore, the non-wilderness areas of these two national forests are 
well and carefully managed in a most professional and responsible 
manner in an open, public process by the U.S. Forest Service and I see 
no compelling case for converting additional thousands of multiple-use 
acres to wilderness in these two forests.

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