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Show if'" Soria II Mi po piilfe Imi sonf rol hmli to efofge Sen. Jake Gam said last Thursday he has prepared legislation to divest the federal fed-eral government of its vast land holdings in the West. He told those attending a dinner meeting of the Utah Section of the American Institute In-stitute of Mining, Metallurgical Metallur-gical and Petroleum Engineers Engi-neers (AIME) that federal ownership of Western land was a historical "accident." Land acquired bytheUnit-ed bytheUnit-ed States by the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 had virtually vir-tually been disposed of. However contrary to original orig-inal intent much acquired with the Mexican Cession in 1848 is still held by the federal fed-eral government. Utah, included in the latter, lat-ter, is controlled 66 percent per-cent by the federal government. govern-ment. Alaska, acquired in 1867 from Russia, is still 96 percent per-cent controlled by the federal fed-eral government. The legislation, he said, "is entirely consistent with my political philosophy that land management can be best exercised by the agency of government closest to the people themselves." The senator warned of even further federal intrusions intru-sions by enlarging wilderness wild-erness areas through "roadless" "road-less" designations. About a third of Utah, or nearly 16 million acres, could be lost to development if they fall into the so-called "roadless" designation, he said. The National Park Service, Ser-vice, the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Manage ¬ ment are now inventorying "roadless" areas forpoten-tial forpoten-tial wilderness designation, he noted. The Park Service has recommended 1.3 million acres for wilderness. The Forest Service had identified identifi-ed 2.9 million acres as potential po-tential wilderness. And, according to Sen. Gam, there are indications the BLM may identify as much as 11.5 million acres as potential wilderness. While much of the "potential "po-tential wilderness" will eventually be cleared for non -wilderness use, in the interim it will be treated as defacto wilderness, "to the detriment of the production produc-tion and development of areas all over the state," he said. A real question is the definition def-inition of "road." The Congress, he said, had in mind areas that are truly roadless. However, federal land managers have adopted adopt-ed a more narrow definition. "What it amounts to is 'if it hasn't got an interstate highway through it, it's roadless.' road-less.' As you can imagine, that makes for a lot of roadless road-less area, particularly in Utah." He noted that in self-defense, the Utah legislature had established its base definition def-inition of a road as the Class D road system. These are public roads, used on regular basis some only seasonally but which would be crippling to lose through an area closure. |