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Show Wise Land Use A short time ago in the Garfield County News, there appeared a letter let-ter to the editor from Lawson LeGate entitled "Set Record Straight." I feel your readers need to know who Lawson LeGate is and who he represents. He is one of five people employed by the Sierra Club whose offices are located in Salt Lake City. They are well paid to promote pro-mote wilderness designation and fight all issues that oppose it. They are trained experts in producing propaganda. They do so by many different methods, one of which was used by Mr. LeGate in his letter. let-ter. They take sentences and paragraphs para-graphs out of context and twist the meanings around to fit their purposes. pur-poses. They play heavily on the emotions of people, using "preservauon of out lands for future generations" as a means to raise funds and expand memberships in order to guarantee their own personal per-sonal preservation in terms of money and jobs. They believe strongly in what they're doing and they have the money and political power to promote pro-mote their cause. The only way to match their expertise is to educate the people so they are not misled by deception and lies. Here are some facts that may help to set our side of the record straight Wilderness is and always will be a threat to our nation's economy and our personal freedoms. Millions Mil-lions of dollars will be lost each year. Studies of Greenley County, Arizona, and Elko County, Nevada, by economist George Learning of Arizona State University, show a loss to the state of Arizona in the next 20 years of 3.36 billion dollars, and over one billion dollars to the state of Nevada. (Just for one county in the state!) If these studies are typical throughout the nation, Mr. Learning projects that over one trillion dollars of our country's economy will be lost due to existing exist-ing wilderness designation. That is what wilderness will do for our children. Since 1964 almost 89 million acres have been designated wilderness. wilder-ness. Now nearly 16 million additional addi-tional acres have been designated wilderness. Lost jobs, lost recreation, recre-ation, lost taxes result from wilderness designation. How much wilderness can America afford? Recent studies also show a definite defi-nite decline of wilderness recreation. recre-ation. Fifty percent of visitation is for only one day or less. The average aver-age use is four hours per acre per year! In a study by Lucas and Mc-Cool, Mc-Cool, use increased until 1979 and since has declined. All indications show that wilderness recreation has probably matured as an industry, therefore, less wilderness designation, designa-tion, not more, seems logical. Environmentalists seem to take pleasure in "hammering our heritage," her-itage," in not considering families, communities and schools in the land use equation. The answer is not found in two choices protect or destroy it is in all the alternatives alterna-tives found between those two. Wise use of our lands still makes the most sense. Louise Liston Garfield County Commissioner |