THE GOOD EARTH UP FOR GRABS: Wilderness: Lusting after the last acre.

...Communities that base their welfare on mining, lumbering, and oil development need only look at the hundreds of ghost towns and ruined economies throughout the West to gauge the solidity of their economic foundations...

...Only Congress can designate lands as wilderness, however, and it is under no obligation to accept the Forest Service's recommendations...

...The threat that his cynicism poses to the nation's meager legacy of wild lands is incalculable, and at all odds irreversible...

...Moreover, wilderness designation itself creates jobs...

...land surface...

...The timber industry's solution to the problem of overcut Federal lands remains unchanged: brashly put in for additional national forest acreage, then strip that clean as well...

...With half a billion acres more leased by the industry nationwide, a land grab of enormous proportions is clearly taking place in the United States, and it is the oil companies, not the preservationists, who are responsible...

...Under certain conditions, loopholes in the act allow for mining^ oil and gas development, road building, motor vehicles use, dam building, and power plant construction in wilderness areas...

...furthermore, the Forest Service would be barred from ever again studying its lands with an eye toward wilderness designation, or from managing them to protect their suitability as wilderness...

...To free the industry from irritating Congressional oversight, it would grant the Secretary of the Interior the unrestricted right to open Federal lands, including the national parks, to mining operations at his pleasure...

...Nevertheless, because the Federal Government pays many of the recovery costs, the timber industry has always supported legislation to open even the most marginal national forest lands to development...

...Seven years passed and dozens of successively weaker versions of the bill were considered before Congress finally approved the Wilderness Act in 1965 and sent it to President Lyndon Johnson for his signature...

...Nor is there room for oil derricks...

...Included are some of the most splendid treasures of the nation's natural heritage— deep virgin forests in the wilds of Idaho, snowy peaks in California's High Sierra, steep-sided ravines that erupt in October crimson and gold in the rolling mountains of northern New Hampshire...

...What Crowell neglected to say but Senator Dale Bumpers determined at Senate Public Lands Subcommittee hearings is that more than thirty billion board-feet of Federal timber—a two-and-a-half- to three-year supply—is already under contract but not yet cut...

...On December 16, 1981, a U.S...

...To permit mining in wilderness is, in a word, ludicrous...

...Since passage of the Wilderness Act, Congressional action on proposed wilderness areas has been characterized by slow and careful consideration of each area's suitability as wilderness as opposed to its resource potential...

...Proposed wilderness areas are always studied thoroughly for their mineral potential...

...Clearly, however, there will be no true wilderness system until mining activities are banished absolutely from wilderness areas...

...The battle lines have been drawn, appropriately enough in Montana's Bob Marshall Wilderness, a grand 1.5-million-acre preserve named for a founder of theJWil-derness Society...

...It allows 75 per cent of its leases to expire without any activity...

...I An extraordinary compromise measure in the Wilderness Act allows the leasing of wilderness areas for mining until 1984, and the mining of valid claims for an indefinite period thereafter...

...Even an elementary appreciation should be sufficient to recognize the irony in the fact that more than one million acres of non-wilderness lands near or adjacent to the Bob Marshall Wilderness are already leased by the oil industry but undeveloped...

...Nevertheless, any portrayal of wilderness as a lockout of petroleum-related job opportunities is unwarranted...

...If so, it will come upon a veritable banquet in Senator Hayakawa's "RARE-II Review Act of 1981" (S.842...

...It was a responsive and perceptive Congress which, in 1964, set aside a tiny reminder of the once great American wilderness "for the use and enjoyment of the American people in such manner as will leave them unimpaired for future use and enjoyment as wilderness, and so as to provide for the protection of these areas, the preservation of their wilderness character, and for the gathering and dissemination of information regarding their use and enjoyment as wilderness...

...Vast areas outside the wilderness system remain to be developed by an industry that is short on people and equipment to do the work...

...With several colleagues, he persuaded Senator Hubert Humphrey and Representative John Saylor to introduce a bill based on the proposal...

...Opposition to the legislation by development interests was fierce...

...It is also the site of 343 pending oil and gas leasing applications and proposals for immediate seismic testing...

...Not to be outdone by Hayakawa's largesse, Representative Santini has introduced his "National Minerals Security Act" (H.R.3364), a mother lode of special-interest legislation for the mining industry...

...There is evidence that the American people are not anxious to choose this course for themselves...

...Watt routinely characterizes the wilderness issue as one of backpackers versus employment, of bird watchers versus energy independence...

...Logging is the only extractive enterprise forbidden by the Wilderness Act, but because the preponderance of wilderness lands are remote mountain and desert regions with little timber potential, the overall economic loss is small...

...We need to strike fast . . . eliminate impediments to expanded oil and gas exploration and development," Budget Director David Stockman professed to The Wall Street Journal...

...Although vast expanses of non-wilderness lands remain to be liberated of their petroleum reserves, Interior Secretary Watt has opened the wilderness system to drilling...

...Last August, a citizen's alliance forced the AMAX Corporation to postpone plans to develop a proposed 20,000-ton-per-day molybdenum mine in a pristine area near Crested Butte, Colorado...

...The wilderness system, often portrayed by opponents as a gigantic lockup of public lands and job opportunities, is, in fact, minuscule...

...What distinguishes this raid from others is that the current Congress may be prepared to swallow the pitch...

...Because of such caution, many areas, including Bohemia Basin, Quartz Hill, and Green's Creek, were excluded from the Alaska Lands Act...

...Exploration and leasing are to cease in 1984, but development of valid claims may continue indefinitely after that...

...Passage of the 1980 Alaska Lands Act was characterized by opponents as a land-grab of cosmic proportions, yet even when, the comparatively huge tracts of wild lands set aside by the Act are added in, the country's total wilderness package amounts to less than four per cent of the U.S...

...II Under the Hayakawa bill, an area larger than Wisconsin would be II thrown open to development Because wilderness areas are wide open to mining already, there would seem to be little need for the bill to address the beleaguered wilderness system...

...If such a bankrupt policy is to guide the United States in the years ahead, we may expect to see the fulfillment of Clinton Anderson's nightmare—a people in despair scouring the land for a board of lumber, a barrel of oil...

...The 23.4 million acres of designated wilderness in the forty-eight contiguous states, most of it in the West, account for barely 1 per cent of the land area...

...there is no net gain in jobs...

...With the deadline only two years away, wilderness areas—if, indeed, they can be called that—are blanketed with mines and leases...

...The oil industry currently has some 500 million acres of land—almost one-quarter of the nation—under lease for oil and gas development...

...Mining is permitted in wil^ derness areas, so mining jobs are not lost when wilderness is set aside...

...A month later, community-wide pressure in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, caused an oil refiner to abandon plans to drill in a nearby wilderness study area...

...Title to these lands could be acquired by the mining companies...

...The spiritual and aesthetic benefits of wilderness, it may be assumed, carry no weight in the Washington of Ronald Reagan...

...One wonders what hope there is for a nation unable to survive or provide jobs on the bounty of 96 per cent of its land base...

...For decades, preservationists had viewed with alarm the accelerating destruction of the American wilderness...

...Their goals are to halt the growth of the wilderness system, and to open established wilderness areas to massive and irreversible development...

...Today in California alone, a backlog of more than 300,000 acres of logged-over forest lands waits to be replanted...

...Watt complied reluctantly, but his former law firm, Mountain States Legal Foundation, immediately filed suit challenging the action...

...Nevertheless Santini, who harbors the illusion that the tiny wilderness system somehow holds the answer to a supposed minerals crisis, proposes in his bill to extend the leasing deadline until 1994...

...Ronald Reagan found a slogan for his rapacious land-use policy in the shrill words of his campaign energy adviser, oil man Michael Halbouty: "We want more production," Halbouty demanded in The Wall Street Journal— "More, more, more...

...Among a host of current threats are these: 1 A bill by Senator S.I...

...Similarly, sixty-one square miles potentially rich in cobalt were dropped from the River of No Return Wilderness created in Idaho in 1980...

...Local economies built around such recreational activities as hunting, fishing, boating, arid camping are based on a renewable and dependable wilderness resource...

...it is inconceivable that in only three years it could act on the huge tracts addressed by the Hayakawa bill...

...Zahniser drafted a four-page proposal for a system of preserves on Federal lands that would remain forever closed to development...

...Although the framers of the Wilderness Act recognized the incompatibility of mines and wilderness lands, they agreed to a twenty-year grace period during which exploration, leasing, and extraction of minerals could continue in wilderness areas...

...Read in the light of current developments, these naive words sound as powerless and vulnerable as the lands they are meant to protect...

...Such oversimplifications have obvious and understandable appeal to workers who have legitimate concerns that the closing of wild lands to development may cost them their jobs...

...The 1984 deadline resulted from a grudging compromise by supporters of the Wilderness Act, and to compromise further would be to grant credence to the myth that there is room in the wilderness for mines...

...But it would be gross selfrdeception to conclude that these lands enjoy permanent protection from development...

...Prime accessible timber lands were opened for development long ago...

...It comes as no surprise that an administration committed to the maximizing of corporate profits at the expense of even such fundamental human concerns as health care, worker safety, and legal representation for the poor should be blind to the considerably less obvious needs to preserve wilderness...

...How does wilderness designation affect employment...

...the agency's recommendations on thirty-six million acres—an area larger than Wisconsin—would be accepted blindly, and these lands opened immediately for development...

...Under an agreement reached between Watt and the Committee, a moratorium on the issuing of oil and gas leases in wilderness areas will be in effect until June 1, 1982...

...WILDERNESS: Lusting after the Last Acre BY ROBERT LEONARD RED The preservationists of the 1950s were a small and unorganized group, crying in the rapidly shrinking wilderness during a decade of unprecedented economic and industrial growth...

...The Administration's resolve to crack open the wilderness system reveals a fear of preservation that borders on phobia...

...Crowell told the House Public Lands Subcommitee that 1 per cent of Oregon's timber preserved in the wilderness system may be "too much...

...Tens of millions of people visit the back country in national forests and parks annually, and consumers avidly snap up books, films, fashions, and television programs that celebrate and illuminate the wilderness experience...

...Communities that see a portion of their local timber lands withdrawn as wilderness do not face economic calamity...

...Even in this company, however, Assistant Agriculture Secretary John Crowell stands out...

...The payoff for industry is that potential wilderness lands not set aside by 1975 would automatically be given over to development...

...to secure for the American people of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring reservoir of wilderness...

...Now, however, the Reagan Administration and its allies in Congress have seized upon the Act's weaknesses and launched an all-out attack on the nation's last wild lands...

...Until now, the wilderness system has remained relatively unadulterated by the exceptions in the Wilderness Act...

...Wilderness designation in many cases has resulted in more efficient use of the available timber and more careful efforts at reforestation...

...f Under the pretext of reducing the nation's dependence on foreign oil, Secretary Watt has moved to open wilderness areas to oil and gas development...

...In 1956, Howard Zahniser, executive director of the Wilderness Society, decided to fight back— Robert Leonard Reid, a free-lance writer in Palo Alto, California, specializes in environmental issues...

...Thus, communities that benefit economically from local petroleum exploration and development do so at the expense of others...

...In the sixteen years preceding passage of the Alaska Lands Act, Congress found time to grant wilderness status to only twenty-three million acres of land...

...Nor did anyone allude to the hit-and-run policy that has characterized timber industry activities since the westward sweeping rape of the nation's forests began in Nineteenth Century Maine...

...This remote and mountainous expanse is the finest remaining habitat for grizzly bears in the continental United States, the home of mountain goats, bald eagles, Canada lynx, wolverine, and the endangered Northern Rocky Mountain wolf...

...whether it can hold the line until Congress passes definitive protective legislation, or until the appointment of an Interior Secretary with an appreciation for the nation's wilderness heritage remains to be seen...

...After that, the leasing of a host of areas, including California's Ventana Wilderness, Colorado's Maroon Bells, and Wyoming's Washakie is set to begin...

...However, there is little evidence that it would...

...Like previous assaults on the West's resources, the current one is nothing more than a get-rich-quick scheme thinly disguised as a noble crusade to unlock the wilderness...

...Today, the wilderness preservation system that the Act created encompasses almost eighty million acres of public lands...

...No less than mining, drilling—and the roads, pipelines, and land clearing activities that accompany it—is incompatible with wilderness...

...Extension of the deadline until 1994 would postpone the phasing out of mining operations for years...

...District Court ruling upheld the Interior Committee's authority to withdraw threatened lands, but only for a "reasonable time," until the Committee can propose appropriate protective legislation to Congress...

...past Administrations and Congresses have remained true to the spirit of the legislation by refusing to exploit its loopholes...

...Passage of the Wilderness Act was achieved only at great cost to the concept of wilderness preservation as held by the conservationists of the 1950s...

...if significant deposits are suspected, Congress invariably withholds wilderness designation from the lands under consideration...

...Propping up the present scheme are myths of a vast wilderness and tall tales of timber, mineral, and petroleum shortages all rectifiable by raiding the back country...

...Whatever fears he may have that new wilderness areas created after 1984 will lock up strategic minerals are groundless...

...The Hayakawa bill would abolish that process by giving Congress only three years to act on the fifteen million acres recommended for wilderness designation by the Forest Service...

...Would he leave any minerals or "one drop of oil" in the ground for future generations...

...As oil crews prepare to invade the back country, the Interior Committee can continue to declare short-term emergencies...

...The bill deals with some sixty-two million acres of potential additions to the wilderness system in the national forests...

...Recognizing the implications of opening a single wilderness area to exploration and drilling, the House Interior Committee invoked a section of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) last May and declared an "emergency," thereby requiring Watt to withdraw the contested area from development for three years...

...Following its second "Roadless Area Review and Evaluation" (RARE-II), the Forest Service proposed to open thirty-six million acres of its roadless lands to development, consider eleven million more acres for the same purpose, and place fifteen million acres in the wilderness system...

...No less stirred by the prospect of vast underground fortunes waiting to be disinterred, Deputy Agriculture Secretary Richard Lyng testified at a hearing on the Hayakawa bill, "With increasing demands for both renewable and non-renewable resources, we can no longer afford further delays...

...Studies have shown that for many wilderness areas, the value of standing timber is exceeded by the cost of the operations required to recover it...

...Only logging and recreational development— hotels, restaurants, and the like—are strictly forbidden...

...Oil and gas extraction are permitted by the Wilderness Act but until now have been prohibited as a matter of policy...

...Under the current 1984 deadline, it will be well into the next century before lands leased prior to the deadline are stripped of their minerals and abandoned...

...The same may be said of wilderness as a source of clean air and water, as a protector of fisheries and wildlife, and as a preserver of genetic and species diversity...

...In the current climate, wilderness advocates are hard pressed to justify their goals, and Secretary Watt has lost no time in capitalizing on their difficulties...

...No," he replied...

...With such a bonanza waiting only three years down the road upon passage of the Hayakawa bill, industry attorneys can be expected to surpass their already prodigious achievements in stalling Congressional action on wilderness proposals...

...Precisely these results have led to a timber industry on Washington's Olympic Peninsula that is as healthy today as it was before twenty-four, billion board feet of timber were withdrawn from logging operations by the establishment of Olympic National Park...

...Raising the same points that Watt raised in a letter to the Interior Committee, the foundation asked that the pertinent section of FLPMA be held unconstitutional...

...The bill provides for a Cabinet-level Minerals Council, an amendment of the Internal Revenue Code to grant favorable tax treatment to the mining industry, and the establishment of mineral development as the dominant use of public lands, where multiple-use is now the rule...

...Hayakawa of California would release thirty-six million acres of potential additions to the wilderness system to immediate development, and would bar the Forest Service from ever again considering its lands for wilderness designation or from managing roadless forests to protect their existing wilderness qualities...

...II Although Federal law requires the Bureau of Land Management to manage wilderness study areas to protect their wilderness suitability until Congress determines otherwise, Interior Secretary James Watt has announced his intention to release for development those areas that President Reagan deems unsuitable for wilderness, a probably illegal decision affecting some twenty-four million acres of potential additions to the wilderness system...

...If he overcomes the legal challenges now blocking his way, the grand array of protected wild lands envisioned by Howard Zahniser will be overrun by roads, pipelines, oil rigs, telephone lines, and bulldozers...

...Economically the West has always been a province of the East," wrote Bernard DeVoto during the Land Grab feuds of the 1940s, "and it has always been plundered...

...The economic benefits of wilderness preservation are long-term in nature, and thus of minimal interest to policy makers bewitched by short-term gain...

...Legislation proposed by Representative Jim Santini of Nevada, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Mines and Mining, would extend the leasing deadline by ten years and establish mining as the dominant use of wilderness areas...

...Wilderness is an anchor to windward," declared Senator Clinton Anderson, one of a handful of wilderness advocates in Congress: "Knowing it is there, we can also know that we are still a rich nation, tending to our resources as we should—not a people in despair searching every last nook and cranny of our land for a board of lumber, a barrel of oil, a blade of grass, or a tank of water...

...Most acreage is locked up under parking lots...

...But like their illustrious forebear, Henry David Thoreau, they believed that in wilderness lay the preservation of the world...