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Show Page 16 Wednesday, March 1, 1978 UTAH WILDERNESS Last Friday President Carter Car-ter signed the American Endangered Wilderness Act and designated over 1.3 million acres in 10 western states as wilderness. It was a .pecial victory for Utah onservationists for the act established Utah's first de- ignated wilderness. Lone i'eak. The Lone Peak Wilderness ;s a rugged area of high Mountains, a variety of life ones and spectacular scenery. scen-ery. It is also an important water-producing a-ea for the populous Wasatch Front. The Lone Peak battle was more than an effort to protect some of Utah's finest alpine scenery. Wilderness continues to be a controversial controvers-ial issue. This is sometimes due to real resource conflicts but more often oppostion results from misunderstanding misunderstand-ing of wilderness. Lone Peak provided conservationists the opportunity to clarify for Utahns the intent and effects of wilderness designation. In the case of Lone Peak the volatile questions of minerals miner-als and timber were virtually virtual-ly absent. The problem of expanding a ski resort facility facili-ty was ironed out. Ultimately, Ultimate-ly, watershed and wilderness purity emerged as the central cen-tral issues. The Forest Service did little to dispel fears that wilderness wilder-ness designation might endanger en-danger the watershed values of the area. The notion persisted that designation would result in an overwhelming over-whelming increase in recreational recrea-tional use. This frequently cited "neon sign syndrome" appears in most wilderness classification arguments. Conservationists argued that non-designated wilderness wilder-ness such as Lone Peak, already receive substantial recreational use. Wilderness designation would require the Forest Service to manage man-age the area to protect all its wilderness values, including watershed, regardless of future pressures. It is not the intent of wilderness to provide pro-vide unlimited recreation at the expense of other resources. resour-ces. The "sights and sounds" theme dominated the Forest Service's no-wilderness argument. ar-gument. Lone Peak is adjac by Kim Crumbo ent to the most populous region in the state. The Forest Service argued that since the "sights and sounds" of the city were perceptible in some parts of the area, Lone Peak did not qualify as wilderness. Conservationists disagreed. They pointed out that the framers of the Wilderness Act of 1964 realized the potential problem of outside influence. The original wording word-ing in a draft bill described wilderness as lands "retaining "retain-ing their primeval environment environ-ment influence." Senator James Murphy introduced an amendment which changed the word "environment" to the word "character." Senator Murphy explained, "The word 'character' is substituted because 'environment' 'environ-ment' might be taken to mean the surroundings of the wilderness, rather than the wilderness itself." The qualities quali-ties of the wilderness entity itself, not its surroundings should be considered in determining suitability for wilderness designation. In the recently released Salt Lake Planning Unit draft management plan, the Forest For-est Service decided not to support any more wilderness. wilder-ness. Instead, the plan proposes pro-poses to establish two "Scenic "Scen-ic Areas," Mt. Olympus and Storm Mountain totalling 19,400 out of the 55,000 acres of roadless land in the planning unit. Interestingly enough, the local Wasatch National Forest is using the same reasoning they used to oppose Lone Peak wilderness wilder-ness designation even though the Wilderness Act, Forest Service regulations and the Department of Agriculture have made it clear that these are not valid reasons to oppose wilderness. Lone Peak provided conservationists con-servationists the opportunity to present wilderness as a . viable multiple use alterna-, tive. Wilderness is a resource re-source and it deserves protection. pro-tection. Those interested in the Salt Lake Planning Unit should contact The Wilderness Society, Soc-iety, 523 Judge Building, Salt Lake City, telephone 359-1337. 359-1337. Deadline for comment is March 10. Public Utah Congressman Gunn McKay has announced he and members of the Interior Public Lands Subcommittee would hear arguments tor and against his proposed Public Grazing Lands Improvement Im-provement Act in Salt Lake City, Thursday, March 30 the only field hearing for the bill outside Washington, DC. Rep. McKay proclaimed his bill "the most far-reaching far-reaching public lands legislation of the 95th Congress," saying that he and Rep. Teno Roncalio (D-Wyo.), (D-Wyo.), who introduced the bill in his Public Lands Subcommittee Sub-committee and who will chair the panel, are anxious to explore the impact of the bill on western ranchers. According to McKay, 83 From time to time, a film reviewer should, because of the many slick commercial films that he is forced to see, view a work that was made mainly as a tribute to the camera's ability to record an event. That is a circumlocutious way of saying a reviewer should see documentaries. People of the Wind is one of those marvelous tributes to the beauty of the other side of the cinema; the non-fiction side that is rarely seen outside of the classroom. The documentary. Morley Safer and 60 Minutes seem to be as close as America will get to supporting an art form as valid as (and less prostituted than) the dramatic part of the industry. Perhaps it is the many uninspired, boring films that the majority of Americans are forced to sit through in the classroom that give documentaries a bad reputation (though I remember that many of those films turned out to be more interesting than the uninspired, boring teacher). A more likely cause of the paucity of documentaries could be America's "I just want to be entertained when I go to the movies" attitude. at-titude. And, of course, places like Slipshod, Nor-. Nor-. Jh Dakota do not have ambyie theater that would , ever play a documentary like People of the Wind. This makes the genre unavailable to a large. majority of the population in this country. (Let' us get down on our knees and bow to the Blue Mouse, mecca of the Utah film lover, without which we, too, would be like Slipshod, N.D. ) The film chronicles the annual spring migration of a tribe of the nation. The people must cross the mountain range with Frank D. McKellar, carman, Salt Lake City, Utah; Arleen Esquibel, steno-cierk, Salt Lake City, Utah; Jarl D. Ottesen, crew dispatcher, Provo, Utah; L M. Ford, engine house foreman, Salt Lake City, Utah; Eugene E. Bauer, carman, Ogden, Utah; Daniel E. Young, pipefitter, Salt Lake City, Utah Grazing Lands Hearing Set of the total land area of 11 .western states is grazing land, almost half of which is federally controlled. He cited recent figures from Interior In-terior and Agriculture Departments showing that 75 of the grazing land under un-der their jurisdiction is in fair to bad condition. "Our public grazing lands are sick. We need to get them back into shape to the point where they can sustain the livestock and the native wildlife the way they used to," said McKay. Rep. McKay, second ranking member of the Interior In-terior Appropriations Subcommittee, Sub-committee, said his bill would inaugurate re-vegetation re-vegetation of western ranges with a minimum $360 million infusion over the next 20 by Quicksilver a years, peg grazing fees to the cost of animal production, produc-tion, do away with environmental environ-mental impact statements on non-impact range improvements im-provements and allow humane adoption or disposal of the West's overpopulation of wild horses and burros. Rep. McKay invited ranchers ran-chers and interested parties to testify at the hearings which will begin at 9:30 a.m., Thursday, March 30, at a yet to be announced location in Salt Lake City, Utah. McKay said four hearings are scheduled, only one of which will be outside Washington, and urged those wishing to testify to contact either his Ogden, Utah office at 801-399-6816 or his office in Provo, Utah at 801-373-4150. In a related matter, the House Rules Committee today granted a rule for the Grazing Fee Moratorium bill their sheep, goats, cows, and donkeys and all of their belongings. They climb 15,000 foot mountains and ford rivers swollen with icy runoff to reach their summer pastures. Yet the migration continues in the traditional manner year after year. There are roads around the range, but the leader of the tribe refuses to use them to truck his animals. "It is the migration that makes us what we are," he states. It is their way of keeping their culture independent of the Iranians, who comprise the political entity controlling con-trolling the territory. It takes only a limited knowledge of the complexity com-plexity of film-making to realize the difficult task that faced the creators of People of the Wind. They had to cross the same mountains and ford the same streams with their cameras, tripods, recorders, film, and light meters. They had to be in the wilderness for the four or five weeks needed for the migration. There was no place to recharge batteries, no lab to let them know whether their footage was good or bad, and no chance for second takes. The hardship they faced with the people is reflected in the beauty of the footage; footage that captured a people's spirit. A critic needs to see films like People of the Wind to be reminded that the commitment to the art of the cinema need not always lead to Hollywood. Sometimes it leads to remote places where the only stars one sees are those of the Milky Way. P.S. This critic is also going down to the Blue Mouse for Lindsey Anderson's O Lucky Man, a delightful film starring Malcom McDowell. can handle the Union Pacific railroad people allowing it a place on the House voting schedule. The moratorium would freeze a proposed Forest Service Bureau of Land Management grazing fee hike for one year. Rep. McKay opposes the hike saying it unfairly ties grazing fees to private grazing land rates rather than the rancher's own cost of production. Rep. McKay, who co-sponsored co-sponsored the bill, called the moratorium a "set-up" for his Grazing Lands Improvement Im-provement Act. "The moratorium will stop for one year the regulations my legislation is designed to change. The moratorium should give us time to get the grazing lands act rolling." McKay predicted the House would vote on the moratorium "within the next few weeks." if. 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