Times Independent | 1978-03-30 | Page 2 | Controversy over Forest Wilderness Study Promises a Hot Time for the B. L. M.

I western Resources Wrapup: I Controversy over Forest wilderness study promises a hot time for the B.L.M. BvHeleneC.Monberg i 4e controversy over J ,he latest Forest Service f. idless area study (Rare mis sure to spread to the l: SUuof Land Manage-1 Manage-1 ment wilderness study . just now getting under- i Major, but isolated, op-I op-I ;tion to RARE H has flared in northwestern j California, southern' Ari-na Ari-na and southwestern South Dakota, according ! K, the Forest Service. The timber industry 1 complains that RARE H I ka3 hurt small mills in ,.J Idaho and Montana, in particular, which rely on r ! the National Forest timber 1 cuts to stay in operation. ' situation became so bad in the Gospel Hump jjea of central Idaho in the Idaho Panhandle and not far from the Oregon-Dnt Oregon-Dnt Washington border that ahi! Sen. Frank Church, D-Ida-.41(1 bo, engineered a comp-lai' comp-lai' romise designed to keep J Grangeville's mills oper-ir oper-ir ating. Local interests rep-resented rep-resented by the Grange-yille Grange-yille Chamber of Commerce Com-merce concerned about continued employment and the Sierra Club concerned con-cerned about wilderness worked out a compromise which decided what areas would continue to be available av-ailable for timber cut, what would be wilderness, and what would be marked mark-ed for further study. The net result was a new 206,000-acre wilderness called Gospel Hump in the Nezperce National Forest in Idaho, established by Congress to solve an urgent urg-ent short-term problem. Church and staff regard the unusual settlement as historic, but both the U.S. Forest Service and the National Forest Products Association are cool to the Gospel Hump compromise. comp-romise. "It's a helluva way to determine what's wilderness," an NFPA spokesman told Western Resources Wrap-up (WRW) last week. Settled Land Uses But, it is agreed on all sides that the Gospel Hump compromise settled land uses in the Grange-ville Grange-ville area. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) wilderness study now getting get-ting underway is likely to unsettle land uses on BLM-managed roadless areas for a long time into the future because of a quirk in the agency's organic or-ganic act. And, it is the reason why BLM is really beating the bushes to get the public involved in the meetings it will be holding throughout the West next month on its new wilderness wilder-ness study. State BLM offices are now announcing announc-ing when and where such meetings will be held within each state next month. BLM is planning to zero in on 46 million acres of roadless area in the south 48 states, and 80 million acres in Alaska for potential poten-tial wilderness designation, designa-tion, under a provision (603) of the Federal Land ' Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA), which is BLM's basic law. That law, which passed on Oct. 21, 1976, ordered BLM to study all primitive and natural areas formally identified by BLM by Nov. 1, 1975, for wilderness area designation not later than July 1, 1980. And it ordered BLM to review all other roadless areas of 5,000 acres or more and all roadless public land islands for possible wilderness wild-erness designation by Oct. 21, 1991, where such areas are-as are under its jurisdiction. jurisdic-tion. As the BLM concludes its wilderness area reviews, re-views, they will be forwarded for-warded to the Secretary of Interior, who will make his recommendations to the President. The President is required to send his recommendations to Congress Con-gress within two years after he has received the BLM studies and the Secretary's Sec-retary's recommendations on each area. A final determination as to what will be wilderness and what will not be wilderness wilder-ness must be made by Congress, according to the statute. This means that there is no provision in the basic legislation to put lands included in the BLM wilderness wild-erness review back into multiple use by administrative adminis-trative action. It also means that lands within the boundaries of a BLM wilderness area review will not be available for new uses until Congress designates them as unsuitable un-suitable for wilderness. At the rate public land legislation legis-lation passes Congress, this will take years. It's an omission in the basic statute likely to cause BLM a lot of difficulty. diffi-culty. But no recommendation recommen-dation has come from Interior to date to amend the law. As the BLM Organic Act initially passed pass-ed the House, there was a provision in the bill which stated that BLM lands which the President found were not suitable for wilderness wild-erness would revert to multiple use automatically unless Congress designated desig-nated them as wilderness areas within 120 days after the President submitted sub-mitted his recommendations recommenda-tions to Congress. In its haste to complete action in 1976 on the Organic Act, the conference committee dropped that provision in the House bill. And it did not put in substitute language. lang-uage. So lands in the BLM wilderness review that don't qualify as wilderness wilder-ness will be in limbo, pending Congressional action. ac-tion. - BLM Associate Director George L. Turcott last week stressed this difference differ-ence between the BLM ' wilderness review now getting underway and the Forest Service RARE H roadless study now in midstream. "We (Interior) will recommend rec-ommend to the President and to Congress what . areas we think should be wilderness and what areas we think should not be wilderness and why. But the final decision on all of the areas will be up to Congress," he told WRW. As the Forest Service RARE II study was initiated initiat-ed by the U.S. Department Depart-ment of Agriculture last year, Agriculture has the authority to restore to multiple use those lands in the RARE II study . which are not recommended recommend-ed for wilderness status, and it plans to do so. Roadless Areas Because of the long-term long-term impact a BLM designation desig-nation of a roadless area will have on such land, BLM is urging the public to get heavily involved in helping it determine what a. roadless area is and what boundaries should be, as BLM launches its wilderness studies. It sent out packets a-bout a-bout its upcoming wilder-Continued wilder-Continued on B2 Wilderness controversy . . Continued doni 151 . ness review to 800 organizations organ-izations which represent public land users andor have long-standing interest inter-est in public land and to Members of Congress and representatives of state and local governments on March 13. It has already drawn a response from Rep. Gunn McKay, D-Utah, whose first Utah district includes in-cludes the northern and . eastern part of the state. In a letter to Interior Secretary Cecil D. An-drus, An-drus, McKay stated lands under oil and gas lease should be excluded from wilderness consideration. "Such lands cannot be considered wilderness if a legal right exists to explore, ex-plore, build roads and develop the resources of the area," McKay wrote to Andrus on March 16. McKay stated in a press release issued the same day, "The ground rules for this (BLM wilderness) review are critical. If they're not right at the very beginning, we'll lose in the long run and much of Utah's energy potential will die in the cradle." The proposed BLM definition def-inition of a road would appear to place in the roadless category all BLM lands without roads that are not regularly used. BLM's proposed definition defini-tion of a road, for wilderness wilder-ness review purposes, is "an access route which has been improved and maintained by using hand or power machinery or tools to insure relatively regular and continuous use. A way maintained solely by the passage of vehicles does not constitute consti-tute a road." An improved and maintained main-tained road is defined as one "where actions have been and will continue to be directed to physically deep the road open to traffic." Relatively regular and continuous use of a road is defined as "use by vehicles ve-hicles having four or more wheels which has occurred occur-red and will continue to occur on a recurring basis, for a predetermined, planned plan-ned or intended purpose. (An example would be access for equipment to maintain a stock water tank. Casual or random use by off-road vehicles or recreationists does not qualify.)" BLM's proposed definition defini-tion of a roadless area is "that area bounded by a road using the edge of the physical change that creates cre-ates the road or the inside edge of the right-of-way as a boundary." The same terms have caused the Forest Service problems in its RARE II study, although the Forest Service has its own set of definitions. The last segment seg-ment (about 12-15 miles) of the Gasquet to Orleans road in northwestern California Cali-fornia remains unbuilt as a local controversy rages over the Six Rivers National Na-tional Forest on how much of the Forest should remain re-main roadless and might qualify for wilderness status, sta-tus, under the RARE II study. Under RARE II, the Forest Service designated some of its national grasslands grass-lands for wilderness stud-y, stud-y, including three totalling about 44,000 acres in the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands area of southwestern south-western South Dakota. Local Lo-cal ranchers are up-in- arms because they catln L put in new fences or nJ? stockponds while study is going on. n ' y' also question how lands can qualify as JZ -:': erness. But the Wilfe ness Society calls the National Grasslands corn prising about 4 miJ acres in 11 states "th & remnants of a prairie wild erness." And ranchers in south- em Arizona are sore about inclusion of 1.8 acres of land around Arj zona's Tonto National For S est in the RARE n study for possible wilderness, as the area has virtually' no trees. So how can it possi bly h ave wilderness val- I . ue? They have asked the V": Forest Service.