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Show Garn Asks Forest Funds to Supplement Park Message Senator Jake Garn (R-Ut) last week asked President Ford to consider the Forest Service's "serious need for assistance" in the form of a program similar to the President's Presi-dent's $1.5 billion proposal to aid and expand the nation's parks. In a letter to the President, Senator Garn emphasized em-phasized that the National Forests are not under the jurisdiction of the Interior Department's Park and Wildlife Wild-life Refuge System and will not receive any of the proposed funds. "In many areas of the country," Garn said, "the National Forests are a primary source of recreation and there is a crying need for additional facilities, extra staffing, maintenance main-tenance and rehabilitation. Although the national park proposal was directed only to the Park and Wildlife Refuge System, it might have been desirable to have considered the package of problems together. In Utah, for instance, in-stance, there are Forest Service facilities which are unusuable because of lack of funding to keep them, in condition. "During a recent visit to the Ashely National Forest I had the opportunity to see the problems the Service has with maintaining and policing an enormous area with little money. In the Wasatch Forest, near Mirror Lake, roads are so poorly maintained that cars can get in only with the greatest difficulty; picnic tables tab-les are chopped and burned by vandals; toilets and fireplaces do not get the proper attention; and manpower is simply not sufficient to provide the protection these facilities require. "I would, therefore, like to see a similar proposal for the Forest Service so the problems of inadequate facilities and vandalism in the National Forest could be alleviated. It would be a shame if land which has long been designated designa-ted as National Forests were to fall into such a state of disrepair as to require exorbitant exorbi-tant rehabilitation costs. A well planned Forest maintenance mainten-ance program would help preserve improvements that have already been made." |
