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Show Western Resources Wrapup: ) Multi-Agency wilderness studies coming to a head in Washington; serious questions raised Nearly one out 01 every in acres of land in the ttuntryislikelytoendup wilderness, as public ,and inventories and Congressional action are shape here and in ffl0st of the West. There are about i.6 billion acres of land in the United States. The prospects pros-pects are that about 200 llion acres will be ultimately ulti-mately designated wilderness, wilder-ness, according to federal wilderness experts . i Chairman Morris K. U' udall, D-Ariz., of the House Interior Committee on Jan. 25 told a Colorado West group here from 10-15 per cent of all forested land in the coun-. try might wind up with a wilderness tag on it, permit per-mit haps more in Colorado ill because of the beauty of ' the land. Assistant Agriculture Secretary M. Rupert Cutler Cut-ler estimated to the Colo. West group on Jan. 26 that about 30 million acres of National Forest land would ultimately end up as wilderness. Cutler's figures are believed, to be conservative. Forest Studies At Cutler's direction, the U.S. Forest Service is currently studying 66.4 million acres of land in 1954 separate roadless areas for wilderness t V , r ' (I ' 'v. r ' f ' J . t 1 1 1 designation, it s commonly common-ly called the Forest Service Ser-vice RARE II study, for roadless and undeveloped area evaluation. With the recent enactment enact-ment into law of the 1978 Endangered American Wilderness Act, there are now 13.9 million acres of wilderness in the National Forest System. Legislation Legis-lation before Congress would add another 9.4 million acres to the system, sys-tem, of which 5.9 million acres would be in Alaska and 3.5 million acres are primitive areas already being managed as wilderness. wilder-ness. National Park Service wilderness experts anticipate antici-pate 20-22 million acres of land within the National Park System will be designated des-ignated as wilderness. Currently 1,120,213 acres in the NPS are already in wilderness, and an additional addi-tional 11,918,382 acres, including some within the National Park System in Alaska, are being proposed pro-posed for wilderness in the 31 million-acre National Nation-al Park System. Wilderness experts in the National Wildlife Refuge System are estimating esti-mating that from 22-24 million acres of the 32.5 million-acre Wildlife Refuge System will become be-come designated wilderness. wilder-ness. Presently about 730,000 acres within the refuges have been so designated, and another 13 million acres are pending pend-ing such designation in legislation before Congress, Con-gress, according to Interior Inter-ior Department sources. Legislation by Udall now being marked up by the .House Interior Committee Com-mittee would designate 73 ''lion acres of the so- called D-2 withdrawn lands in Alaska as wilderness wilder-ness "instant wilderness" wilder-ness" as dubbed by staff. BLM Just Starting The Bureau of Land Management is just beginning be-ginning its wilderness inventory, as required under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, which is BLM's Organic Act. Officially Offic-ially BLM is looking at 450 million acres, but unofficially un-officially it is looking at 46 million acres of roadless area in the "South 48," of which 40 million acres are believed to have wilderness wilder-ness potential, and 80 million acres in Alaska which are roadless. The BLM's estimate at this point is that about 30 million acres of land under its direction will become designated wilderness. If those estimates hold up, and if the Udall bill or a compromise similar to it passes Congress, between 171-180 million acres of land would end up as wilderness. Additionally, Congress on its own is passing legislation which adds a million or so acres to the National Wilderness Wilder-ness System every year or so. Udall anticipates such bills will continue for another decade. Also, the BLM Organic Act gives BLM until Oct. 21, 1991, to review lands under its jurisdiction for wilderness characteristics. Later-day additions to the wilder- ness system, defacto or dejure, are likely to make the 200 million acre estimate es-timate quite accurate. RARE II Controversy The U.S. Forest Service RARE II wilderness is controversial, coming as it has, only about five years after RARE I, USFS's first wilderness study, tieing up millions of acres of land that might be used for such non-wilderness type of use as timbering, major recreation developments develop-ments and mining. When the BLM study is added to the RARE study, the impact im-pact will be even greater in the West where there are huge public holdings. Nevertheless, such large blocks of land could not continue to be estab lished as wilderness throughout the West if there were major, organized organ-ized opposition to them. Wilderness areas are used mainly by hikers, campers and backpackers. Mechanized Mech-anized equipment and motorized vehicles cannot be brought into wilderness wilder-ness areas, and management manage-ment of the land is sharply restricted. The Wilderness Wilder-ness . Society, for which Cutler once worked, exists to promote wilderness areas, and powerful environmental envi-ronmental groups join with the Society in doing so. Their aim is to provide future generations "outstanding "out-standing opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation," recrea-tion," according to Steve Payne of the Wilderness Society. From the small Gila Wilderness in Southwestern South-western New Mexico, which was established by the U.S. Forest Service in 1921, the wilderness concept con-cept has expanded to the point where about 38 million mil-lion acres of public land are now either in the National Wilderness System Sys-tem or are managed as wilderness, according to the Forest Service. What is a Roadless Area? As BLM gears up to start its wilderness review, re-view, it is asking the question, "What is a roadless area?" An area is not roadless, according to BLM's proposed definition, defini-tion, if a roadway "has been improved by mech-ancial mech-ancial means, even a pick and shovel," BLM Assoc. Director George L. Turcott told Western Resources Wrap-up on March 15. BLM will be holding a week-long session next week for personnel in the state offices to help them conduct the meetings that they plan to hold throughout through-out the West in April on BLM's upcoming roadless area-wilderness area review, at which they will be briefed by Robert Lund, BLM's resident wilderness expert. This will be the public's first chance to become involved in-volved in the review, to discuss ground rules, guidelines, procedures to be used and policy, according ac-cording to Turcott and Lund. The New Mexico state BLM office in Santa Fe announced, for example, on March 8 that it would be taking such comments from the public at three meetings which it plans to hold in Albuquerque on April 18, in Las Cruces on April 19 and in Roswell on April 20. In addition, it noted, those who might not be able to attend any of these meetings could make written comments to the director of BLM in Washington, D.C., until May 17. BLM is looking for a publicly acceptable method of identifying potential po-tential wilderness areas, it said, in announcing the public meetings. R. Mike Griswold, the U.S. Forest Service's resident resi-dent wilderness expert, anticipates public involvement involve-ment in meetings from June 15 to October 1 on the USFS draft statement on the environmental impact im-pact (EIS) of RARE H "will be greater than for any program in this department." de-partment." USFS plans to have its draft EIS completed com-pleted by mid-June, the final EIS completed by the end of the year, and then to make its recommendations recommenda-tions to the President and to Congress early next year. It is pushing ahead on RARE LT because there has been a lot of criticism of USFS for doing a second sec-ond roadless area study within a decade and because be-cause one-third of the 187 million acres of National Forest System land is tied up in the study. If Con- gress does not act quickly on its recommendations, USFS is considering asking ask-ing the President, the Secretary of Agriculture or the Chief of the Forest Service to issue an order or directive to return to multiple use the land that USFS does not recommend recom-mend for wilderness. Basically, USFS will recommend that the 66.4 million acres in its study fall into three categories: wilderness, multiple use, and further study. Critics are concerned that the bulk of the lands will fall into the further study category, to be "followed by RARE BJ and RARE IV," as Dean Sherman, who publishes a forest industry affairs newsletter in Portland, Ore., stated on Jan. 16. Sherman's prediction on the outcome of RARE II: 25 per cent of the land recommended for instant wilderness; 25 per cent for multiple use, and 50 per cent "still in Limbo" Lim-bo" for further study. |