AH, WILDERNESS

...Now the lumber interests are hungrily eying this region...

...And the heavy use of national park facilities in recent years has done considerable damage: camp grounds are in bad shape in many places...

...There are some primitive areas almost as economically valuable as tidelands oil...

...There is a well-organized movement afoot to rob the nation of some of its wilderness remnants...

...Largely because of the agitation of the save-the-wilderness groups, aided by the public agencies which are custodians of the parks and monuments, the general public is becoming increasingly aware of the value of the wilderness—not cornmercial value, but spiritual and psychological...

...At Yosemite you have to make reservations several months in advance if you plan to stay at a hotel...

...Within the shadow of Mount Whitney, where the land is a mass of picturesque crags and narrow canyons, there is a big copper mining operation...

...My family made its first visit to the Grand Canyon only last year, and we were amazed at the lack of housing to accommodate those who want to enjoy this phenomenon of nature...

...It is heartening that the discovery of the need for rest and roaming in cool, quiet, primitive surroundings to restore spiritual and mental health should come at a time when there is a growing movement to preserve and enlarge America's wilderness...

...These roadless tracts, from 5,000 to 100,000 acres of more in size, are almost entirely under public ownership— that is, in national parks or forests, or in state preserves or parks...

...In the latter category is the Everglades National Park in Florida, with its swamps and trees and colorful marine birds...

...Their timber is in demand by the lumber industry...

...The pressure against the reserved wilderness areas in the United States is unceasing—both from private and public agencies...

...He is co-author (with Bernard Frank) of the book, "Water, Land, and People...

...Although the area is technically a wilderness, the mine has destroyed much of the grandeur...

...They have been set aside because of scenic grandeur, like the National Monuments in Utah and Arizona— of which Grand Canyon is the outstanding example—or because they offer unparalleled opportunities for fishing, hiking, mountaineering, or other sports...

...The wilderness enthusiasts are fighting the project on the ground that preservation of a national park is more important than building another reservoir...

...They claim that much good lumber is going to waste...

...Some designated wilderness areas are valuable chiefly as "outdoor museums," where the flora and fauna of primeval America have been left undisturbed...

...The forest supervisor showed me what mining has done to a precious bit of wilderness...

...But Muir and his cohorts lost the battle when Congress in 1913 passed the Raker Act granting perpetual water rights on some 400,000 acres of the public domain to San Francisco...

...But the effort to enlarge these magnificent recreational tracts has met with powerful resistance...

...their grassland is ardently desired by the cattle interests...

...A wide road has been cut up the steep slope, miners' shacks fill the canyon, and piles of mining refuse are heaped up everywhere...

...II In the making at the present time is a battle over the Adirondack Forest Preserve, which New York state put into wilderness status as far back as the eighties...

...Forest Service is constantly beset with demands for special uses of the wilderness tracts in the national forests...

...Logging, even if justifiable from the standpoint of taking out dead or down trees, means roads and an influx of, caterpillars, trucks, and other machinery that play havoc with scenery...

...Under existing laws, anybody who thinks he has found a vein of precious minerals can stake out a claim in a national forest...

...The showdown will come with the bills which Sen...

...And the wilderness is definitely a natural resource...

...And who can say they are wrong since an alternate site for the reservoir can be found...

...Chairman of the Interior Affairs Committee, Butler is in a strategic position to press for action on his measures to "turn back" a substantial part of federal lands to the states...

...And the wilderness beauty vanishes...

...They claim that once the lumbermen are admitted, even if only to salvage the overripe timber, there might be no end to encroachment on the beautiful mountains...

...The Director of the National Park Service has been begging Congress for additional money to maintain facilities in decent shape...

...After Leopold left the Service the torch was taken up by Robert Marshall...

...unique scenic areas are scarred...

...Valuable assets belonging to the whole nation would become subject to exploitation by private interests which hold state legislatures in contempt as easily controlled and cheaply influenced...

...Another famous name in the fight for preservation of the wilderness is the late Aldo Leopold...

...Clearly, we need more wilderness areas, despite the remarkable growth in the last generation of state park and forest systems...

...This is not quite the paradox it may sound...

...Planners of water developments, such as the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army's Corps of Engineers, seem oblivious to man's need for outdoor recreation and communion with rocks and stones and trees and the everlasting hills...

...So far it has resisted them with one exception— mining claims...

...A keen biologist and forester, he convinced the U.S...

...Illustrative of the dangers involved is the Reclamation Bureau's intention to build a dam across the Colorado River at Bridge Canyon to form a reservoir upstream from Lake Mead and supplement the power facilities of Hoover Dam...

...John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, the leading wilderness organization in the United States, led the protest...

...The Living Wilderness...

...Except for the upper Great Lakes, what remains of the wilderness is now found mainly on the upper— and least accessible—reaches of the major drainage basins...

...If timber could be cut in the Olympic National Park, why not in the Great Smokies National Park, the finest wilderness preserve in the Appalachian area...

...Ill A greater menace to the primitive areas, however, are the power developers...

...If his claim is proven, he gets a patent...

...That demand was overcome, or at least temporarily stilled...

...Their present plans envisage the ruin of many wilderness areas, including spectacular geologic formations and pristine valleys and watercourses...

...Organizations like the Wilderness Society, the Sierra Club, the National Parks Association, the Alpine Club, and the Save-the-Redwoods League are mushrooming in membership and effectiveness as they pursue their goal: to mobilize public support to save the wilderness areas already put aside in state or national parks or forests, and press constantly for the creation of more wilderness tracts, ANTHONY NETBOY was formerly associated with the U.S...

...Ah, Wilderness . . . By Anthony Netboy SOCIOLOGISTS and psychologists more and more voice the conclusion that Americans need less civilization and more primitivism if, paradoxically, they are to reach and enjoy the civilized state to which they aspire...

...And here the public agencies are the malefactors...

...Under a clause written into the New York state constitution, nobody can cut a stick of timber in this beautiful mountain domain...

...In 1908 Secretary of the Interior Garfield authorized the city of San Francisco to acquire a number of sites in the magnificent Hetch-Hetchy for storage reservoirs...

...Many areas desirable as wilderness retreats have potential commercial uses...

...If one magnificent area is thus invaded, they argue, none will be safe from the dam builders...

...Actually, there is not much left of the primeval wilderness that was America before Columbus set foot in the new world...

...The great Western national parks are unable during the tourist season to accommodate the thousands and thousands of people who would like to sojourn there...

...The primitive wilds offer an escape from gregarious and mechanized civilization...

...The Society has only about three or four thousand members, but it issues a magnificent quarterly...

...Forest Service and as a free-lance writer has written frequently on conservation and natural resources...

...Wholesale clearing of forests, plowing up of the heavy sod on the prairies and Great Plains, drainage of swamps, marshes, and lakes, the opening up of the mountain regions to mining, logging, grazing, and commercialized recreation have left few areas of undisturbed beauty...

...Hugh Butler, Nebraska Republican, plans to introduce in the 83rd Congress...

...The Bureau of Reclamation has plans for building two dams in the Upper Colorado Basin that would ruin the unique geologic formation known as Dinosaur National Monument in Utah...

...Had Congress listened to this pressure group and modified the National Park system to permit commercial logging, grave consequences would have ensued...

...With the rapid growth in population and expansion of our economy in the past decade, pressure on all our natural resources is mounting...

...Such legislation can destroy the federal conservation program, especially the watershed, grassland, and recreational phases...

...All the major national parks have overflowed with visitors...

...Psychiatrists tell some of their patients there is nothing basically wrong with them that a long spell of relaxation in the wilderness would not cure...

...IV Those fighting for the preservation of the wilderness must be prepared for a tougher struggle ahead as a business man's government takes over in Washington...

...The U.S...

...Not long ago I visited the Inyo National Forest in northeastern California...

...The tensions of city life, the economic pressure of holding a job, the artificial standards of social competition, and the furious competitive pace of our business civilization—all of these produce the jangled nerves and corrosive anxieties which add up to the beginnings of breakdown in middle age...

...A few years ago the lumbermen of the Pacific Northwest demanded that the Olympic National Park be opened to timber cutting...

...Lovers of the wilderness would ^rather see much usable timber allowed to rot —as in the great national parks, where no commercial logging is done—than to have the face of nature marred by logging operations...

...They point out that other sites are often available for the power dams...

...No hard-surfaced roads would be built there, and the natural features of the landscape would as far as possible be preserved...

...Few issues before the country are charged with so much long-run meaning for all the people as this coming showdown in Congress...

...The most notorious desecration of a choice bit of wilderness in our lifetime was the invasion of Hetch-Hetchy Valley, some 20 miles above Yosemite Valley...

...Perhaps they have a point, and even the New York state conservation commission has begun to listen to their pleas...

...Doubtless the idea is economically sound, but the proposed reservoir would extend upriver through the full length of Grand Canyon Monument and 18 miles into the Grand Canyon National Park itself...

...from its headquarters in Washington, and is ever ready to fight against any encroachments on the remaining bits of American wilderness...

...Forest Service that tracts of wild land, containing unspoiled primitive features, should be set aside in the national forests for undisturbed use by hikers, mountain climbers, and other enthusiasts...

...With the great rush to stake out mining claims in recent years under the defense program, thousands of acres of wilderness on national forest land have been invaded by prospectors, many of them phony...

...Once a precedent is set, the end of the wilderness is in sight...

...Wilderness enthusiasts, spearheaded by the Sierra Club of California, are up in arms...

...This action provoked a violent attack by the wilderness enthusiasts, who claimed that there were other places than Yosemite where San Francisco could build reservoirs...

...And there are potent interests, including not only the organized wilderness enthusiasts but the hotel and innkeepers of the Adirondacks, who want no changes...

...Many people stay in motels 75 miles away...

...Marshall—a city boy, raised in New York, the son of Louis Marshall, the famed Zionist leader—devoted most of his life to the preservation of the wilderness, and when he died left part of a substantial fortune to the Wilderness Society, which he had organized...

...Ironically, the Adirondack Forest Preserve can't be whittled away, or disturbed, without changing the state constitution...

...where commercial activities are banned and scenic and recreational values are preserved for the people...

...and their water resources are eyed greedily by the private power companies and even by some public power agencies...

...Since the end of World War II, the public has used the wilderness retreats in growing numbers...