[The following
is the third chapter from the book, Protecting the Sawtooth Country,
1979.]
Creating the Sawtooth National
Recreation Area, Protecting Wilderness
by John Osborn
"We
are in danger of doing what we always have done, of continuing to use the
wilderness as raw material out of which to fashion culture that will seem, in
our constantly more civilization-conditioned image, to be a 'better' world but
one with less and less of its wilderness."
--Howard Zahniser, 1960[1]
Such words of
warning would have seemed discordant on September 1, 1972, in the Sawtooth
country. On that warm, late summer's day, near the Forest Service's visitors'
center facing Redfish Lake and the spectacularly rugged high country, almost
400 people gathered to dedicate the newly created Sawtooth National Recreation
Area (SNRA).
The enabling
legislation, given Presidential signature one week earlier, included in the
Sawtooth NRA three mountain ranges: the Sawtooths, the White Clouds, and the
Boulders. In withdrawing the entire recreation area from new mineral entry, and
prohibiting the granting of patents on pending claims, the legislation brought
to a close the most bitterly contested conservation battle in Idaho's history.
The White Clouds
were the focus of the controversy. Located in south central Idaho about
twenty-five miles east of the Sawtooth range and twenty-five miles north of Sun
Valley, the White Cloud range had remained virtually unknown and undisturbed
until the spring of 1969.
During the
previous summer, ASARCO (American Smelting and Refining Company) had discovered
a molybdenum deposit at the base of Castle Peak - at 11,820 feet, the highest
in the White Clouds. The economic benefits from developing the deposit would be
substantial. Lasting thirty to fifty years, the mining operation might yield as
much as $1,500,000,000 in gross revenues.
Congressman
James McClure, a proponent of opening the White Clouds to mining, recognized in
the ASARCO venture a source of jobs and income: "Idaho has a limited
economic base now and we should be slow in locking the door against utilization
of our resources. I take no pride in Idaho having a per capital income among
the lowest in the country."[2]
The economic
benefits would not be without ecological consequences. ASARCO's proposed open
pit mine, 1.75 mile-long tailings pond, and 400 foot high dam at the base of
Castle Peak would significantly impact the immediate area and could have
deleterious effects to the ecology of the entire Salmon River drainage. Mining
would increase silt in the streams and have toxic effects on aquatic life from
exposed ore deposits and tailings (impacts compounded by additional contamination
from the leaching of heavy metals).
Harmful impacts
would long continue due to the open-pit type of mining. Wrote one federal
official to his superior in 1970,
[the]
East Fork of Salmon River is one of the most productive single tributaries of
the Salmon River system for Chinook salmon. It can easily be forecast that this
entire run will be wiped out and the salmon production of the Salmon River
below the East Fork will also be affected.[3]
Perhaps most
importantly, ASARCO's venture would destroy the spectacular beauty of the White
Clouds. Thus, when ASARCO applied in the spring of 1969 to the Forest Service
for an exploratory access road to the base of Castle Peak, the company stirred
up a hornet's nest.
The struggle
over the White Clouds spread beyond Idaho and became a national issue. In
April, 1969, the Forest Service called a series of meetings to explain the
situation and gather views. The Forest Service maintained that they were unable
to protect the White Clouds from mining. The White Clouds had no protective
status and, therefore, had not been withdrawn from mineral entry. Under an 1872
law, ASARCO was within its rights to stake mining claims and – if the
claims were valid – the Forest Service would have no choice but to permit
the access road.[4]
Also at the
meetings, Idaho's governor, Don Samuelson, supported the mining interests and
asked the Forest Service to issue the permit. Samuelson's stance was untenable
for some officials of the governor's administration, including Ernie Day.
Ernie Day,
chairman of the Idaho Parks Board, followed Samuelson at the podium and used
the opportunity to resign: "I don't see any sense of being part of a team
which doesn't have enough regard for our resources to better differentiate
between uses."[5] Day then
took the issue to the Sierra Club's bi-annual wilderness convention in San
Francisco. As a result of his presentation and resignation, almost every
conservation publication in the country did stories on the White Clouds
controversy.[6]
Political wreckage
was strewn along the four-year course of the controversy. In the April meetings
held by the Forest Service, Governor Samuelson gave his unqualified support to
mining the White Clouds. During the following winter, while the Forest Service
studied ASARCO's application for the road permit, Samuelson criticized that
agency and demanded that the permit be issued in an almost daily series of news
conferences.[7] The
Governor's pro-mining stance figured prominently into his 1970 defeat for
reelection by conservationist, Cecil Andrus.[8]
Congressman
James McClure, also a proponent of mining, also risked his political future
during the spring of 1972 by opposing a permanent ban on mining in the proposed
Sawtooth NRA. Testifying before the Senate Interior's subcommittee, McClure
lambasted a recently completed report opposing mining in the White Clouds.[9]
McClure said the
report was "not factual," was "opinionated," and
"subjective." The congressman told the committee, "I find this
study offensive" and further charged such a study was unfairly
"playing with the people's resources."[10]
Running for the
Senate seat vacated by Len Jordan, McClure shifted his stance to support
legislation that banned mining from the proposed Sawtooth NRA.[11]
This legislation, established the Sawtooth National Recreation Area.
Protecting the
Sawtooth country from despoilation began long before the White Clouds
controversy erupted. After President Roosevelt established the Sawtooth Forest
Reserve in 1905 (with subsequent boundary revisions), several efforts emerged
for designating the area as a National Park. First of these was in 1911 when a
group of women in Idaho endorsed such a plan.
Perhaps the most
significant protective action was taken by the Forest Service on October 12,
1937, when the agency established the Sawtooth Primitive Area. Continuing
management under the Forest Service or redesignating the area as a National
Park managed by the National Park Service was a controversy renewed in 1960
when Senator Frank Church introduced legislation to study the area for National
Park status.
In April, 1966,
Church introduced a bill for establishing a Sawtooth National Recreational Area
and a companion bill for a Sawtooth National Park. A senate subcommittee held
hearings in Sun Valley to gather testimony on the two bills from local
residents. With testimony overwhelmingly one-sided in favor of continuing
Forest Service management in a national recreation area, Senators Church and
Len Jordan supported a bill to create a Sawtooth NRA.
The Sawtooth NRA
legislation passed in the Senate; it died in the House. Then in July Idaho
learned of ASARCO's designs on the White Clouds. Church and Jordan amended, and
the Senate passed, legislation including the White Clouds in the proposed
Sawtooth NRA.
Not until
January, 1972, did similar legislation reach the floor in the House. After
differences between the House and Senate bills were resolved, legislation was
finally enacted in August, 1972. The Sawtooth Primitive Area became a part of
the National Wilderness Preservation System and the wilderness joined the White
Clouds, Boulders, and environs in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area.[12]
During the
dedication of the Sawtooth NRA held in late summer 1972, near the shores of
Redfish Lake, people spoke of responsibilities in the future and remembrances
of the past. Chief of the Forest Service, John R. McGuire, outlined plans for
managing the NRA. Senator Frank Church, perhaps the man most credited with
protecting the Sawtooth country in modern times, said of securing protective
legislation: "It has been a long fight."[13]
Yet, the fight
to preserve wilderness had been waged long before the controversy over the
White Clouds. Establishing the Sawtooth NRA was only part of a larger history
to protect America's dwindling wilderness.
Only eight years
before the Sawtooth NRA was dedicated, the Wilderness Act of 1964 established
the National Wilderness Preservation System. The Sawtooth Wilderness became
part of this system with the creation of the Sawtooth NRA.
Long before the
Wilderness Act – even before the tremendous "grass-roots"
support of wilderness preservation that is manifest in the 1964 Wilderness Act
– the U. S. Forest Service began preserving large tracts of National
Forest land as wilderness. The Sawtooth Primitive Area was set aside in 1938.
Even long before the Forest Service's administrative wilderness, a growing
number of Americans stood in appreciation of nature and opposed destroying
wilderness.
A deep
appreciation of nature lay behind early efforts to set aside wilderness.
Notable among these visionaries were the "transcendentalists". Nature
for the transcendentalists reveals universal spirit and, as such, is a source
of morality.
Ralph Waldo
Emerson (1803-1882) was the preeminent transcendentalist of his time.
"[T]he whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind," wrote
Emerson. "[In] the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than
in the streets or villages . . .in the woods we return to reason and
faith."[14]
A contemporary
and disciple of Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, left a deep and lasting
impression on the wilderness movement. Thoreau is, writes historian G. O.
Robinson, "the guru of modern preservationists."[15]
Thoreau spent two years (1845-1847) on the shores of Walden Pond. He wrote from
these experiences,
I
went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the
essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and
not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.[16]
When one walks
outward into the wilderness, he had the opportunity to go inward and explore
his own mind. Thoreau spoke in Concord, Massachusetts, the words for which he
is, perhaps, best remembered. "I wish to speak a word for Nature, for
absolute freedom and wildness." After presenting a rejoinder to those who
would champion only civilization, Thoreau concluded, "In Wilderness is the
preservation of the World." Over time Thoreau's writings influenced many
that wilderness did not exist merely to be destroyed.[17]
Origins of the
idea of actually preserving wilderness can be traced to the 19th century. First
to publicly advocate land preservation was George Catlin in 1833, a student and
painter of American Indians. Catlin was greatly disturbed by the slaughter of
bison, fearing the eventual extinction of bison and Indian. In an article
appearing in the widely read New York Daily Commercial Advertiser, Catlin recommended that the Great
Plains be "reserved in their pristine beauty and wildness."[18]
During the last
half of the 19th century lands were actually reserved. In 1864 Congress
transferred to California the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove for the
purpose of reserving the area for public use.[19]
Eight years
later in 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed an act reserving and
withdrawing "from settlement, occupancy, or sale" over two million
acres in (what is now) northwestern Wyoming. This area, Yellowstone, was
America's first National Park. Buildings and roads were to be permitted.
Although a National Park, Yellowstone was not a roadless wilderness.[20]
New York's
Adirondack Park was America's first wilderness reservation to be held without
development and has remained almost unaltered to this day. The impetus behind
establishing the park was the result not of preservationist spirit but of
opposition to wasteful logging methods and corruption in selling the state's
timber lands. In 1885, the state legislature preserved 715,000 acres of forest
in the Adirondack and Catskill mountains:
The
lands now or hereafter acquired constituting the forest preserve shall be
forever kept as wild forest lands. They shall not be sold, nor shall they be
leased or be taken by any person or corporation, public or private.[21]
A tug-of-war
insured among the preservations, desiring to keep the land inviolate; the
foresters (led by Dr. Fernow and Dr. Hough) insisting on scientifically managed
timber production; and lumbermen, who saw valuable timber being locked up
beyond their grasp. The 1885 law was revised and, in 1894, passed as a constitutional
amendment. America's first wilderness, the Adirondack Park, remained inviolate.[22]
A controversy in
the Yosemite during the early 1900s marks the beginning of grassroots support
for wilderness preservation. The controversy also marks a "parting of the
ways" between conservationists believing only in regulated "use"
and conservationists believing also in preserving wilderness. These two
factions had been united during the 1800s against those who advocated unlimited
use of the public domain. For example, a noted preservationist of this period,
John Muir, had worked along with the AFA, Fernow, and Hough in support of the
1891 Forest Reserve Act. Muir was especially influential in building support
for the 1897 Washington Birthday Reserves, endearing him to forestry minded
conservationists.[23] Schism,
however, followed cooperation.
Differences in
outlook between John Muir and Gifford Pinchot were fundamental to the
controversy in Yosemite and is an apt illustration of the vague limits of
"conservation." Gifford Pinchot believed that the Forest Reserves
should be opened up to commercial use – not preserved from such use. For
Pinchot, bringing the National Forest system of over 180 million acres into
management forced a selection of the most pressing problems of special
interests. In comparison to lumbering, mining, water power development, and
grazing, Pinchot did not consider recreation pressing.[24]
"The object
of our forest policy," Pinchot declared in March, 1903, to the Society of
American Foresters, "is not to preserve the forests because they are
beautiful . . . or because they are refuges for the wild creatures of the
wilderness . . . but . . . the making of prosperous homes. . . . Every other
consideration comes as secondary."[25]
In his
autobiography Pinchot writes, "Forestry is tree farming. Forestry is
handling trees so that one crop follows another. To grow trees as a crop is
Forestry."[26] Gifford
Pinchot and, through him, the Forest Service opposed any general policy of
preservation and supported regulated commodity use.[27]
A
conservationist of a different bent was John Muir, 1838-1914. Muir opposed
destroying wilderness, having witnessed the devastation of the forests during
his childhood on the Wisconsin frontier. Transcendentalism was central to John Muir's
love of the wilderness. The naturalist was especially indebted to Emerson and
Thoreau for the transcendental themes of his work.[28]
Emerson and Muir
met in 1871 at Yosemite Valley, beginning a friendship maintained by
correspondence. In 1896, long after Emerson's death in 1882, Muir acknowledged
that Emerson had been a great influence on his life.[29]
John Muir,
unlike Emerson and Thoreau, took up active defense of nature. Through books
(which became minor best sellers) and articles (the nation's foremost
periodicals competed for his essays), Muir publicized the cause of preserving
wilderness. He led in organizing the Sierra Club, founded in 1892, and was
president of the Sierra Club from its founding until his death twenty-two years
later. The Sierra Club was dedicated to enlisting "the support of the
people and the government in preserving the forests and other features of the
Sierra Nevada Mountains."[30]
Writes R. Nash, a historian of the wilderness movement, "As a publicizer
of the American wilderness Muir had no equal."[31]
Defending
wilderness during the 1890s, Muir supported scientific management of the Forest
Reserves. "The forests must be, and will be, not only preserved, but used;
. . [yielding] a sure harvest of timber, while at the same time all their
far-reaching (aesthetic and spiritual] uses may be maintained unimpaired."[32]
However, with
Pinchot's persistent devotion to commodity use, such compromise was untenable.
Muir broke with Pinchot over the matter of sheep grazing. The naturalist stood
adamant against overgrazing. Referring to the wild flowers in California's
central valley, Muir writes, "[The) arch destroyers are the shepherds,
with their flocks of hoofed locusts, sweeping over the ground like a fire, and
trampling down every rod that escapes the plow . . . ." [33]
Pinchot, in a
Seattle news release in 1897, asserted that sheep grazing did little, if any,
harm.[34]
The same day as the news release, Muir confronted Pinchot. Pinchot admitted
making the statement. "[I]f that is the case," Muir replied, "I
don't want anything more to do with you. When we were in the Cascades last
summer you yourself stated that the sheep did a great deal of harm."[35]
Controversy in
California's Yosemite deepened the split between Muir and Pinchot. The Hetch
Hetchy Valley in the Yosemite was the actual site of this controversy
Spectacularly beautiful and much like Yosemite Valley, Hetch Hetchy was
incorporated into the Yosemite National Park by Congress largely through the
efforts of Muir's Sierra Club. The valley also contained a reservoir site. San
Francisco, recovering from the devastating earthquake of April 18, 1906, was in
need of a water supply and wanted to dam Hetch Hetchy.
Muir objected:
"Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people's cathedrals and
churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of
man."[36]
According to
Stewart Udall, Muir considered this issue as precedent setting, for if San
Francisco could intrude on National Parks, then all National Parks were open to
despoilation through resource development.[37]
Gifford Pinchot decided that San Francisco's water supply was more important
than preserving Hetch Hetchy for recreation. During critical periods, Pinchot
used his influence in favor of the dam by publicly announcing that a dam would
not mar the scenic beauty of the valley. In 1913 the bitter struggle came to an
end. Congress authorized the construction of the dam.[38]
R. U. Johnson, a
prominent journalist and colleague of Muir, describes Pinchot's influence on
the decision: Pinchot "contributed his great influence to the
commercialization of the Valley, and but for him I believe the scheme [Hetch
Hetchy dam) would never have succeeded."[39]
The schism
between preservation and wise-use widened: the Hetch Hetch controversy, lasting
about five years, merged scattered preservationist sentiment into a national
movement. "[T]he conscience of the whole country has been aroused from
sleep," wrote Muir shortly after Congress's decision.[40] "To
preservationists," wrote forest historian G. O. Robinson, "Hetch
Hetchy became the Alamo of wilderness, a symbol and a call to arms."[41]
With seeming prescience, Muir wrote after the Hetch Hetchy defeat, "They
will see what I meant in time."[42]
The Hetch Hetchy
controversy indirectly induced the Forest Service to recognize recreation as a
legitimate use of forest land – recognition that later justified
wilderness preservation as a legitimate use of forest land.
Hetch Hetchy
demonstrated to the public that the National Parks were inadequately protected.
Pinchot, no longer Chief Forester but still influential, opposed the creation
of a separate bureau to administer the National Parks. He changed his stance
for support if such a bureau would be placed in the Department of Agriculture.
In 1916, Pinchot's
hopes were thwarted when Congress established in the Interior Department a
National Park Service "to promote and regulate the use of the federal
areas known as national parks . . . ."[43]
The Park Service
recognized recreation as a legitimate use of public lands; the Forest Service
did not. Under the dynamic leadership of Stephen T. Mather (administrative head
of the National Parks from 1915-1929), the Park Service threatened to
incorporate large areas of National Forest land into the National Park System.
This threat added impetus to the Forest Service's accepting recreation on an
equal footing with wood, water, and forage uses.[44]
Growing public
use of the National Forests was the most significant factor inducing the Forest
Service to recognize recreation as a legitimate use of forest land. The outcry
for the park bureau and for an increased emphasis on recreation in managing the
public lands reflected the changing mood of the country during the 1910s.
Americans were "getting back to nature" in attempts to escape the
hurried pace of urban life. In increasing numbers, people were turning to the
outdoors to return to a "primitive way of life . . . as a remedy for worn
nerves."[45]
The Forest
Service estimated that the number of summer visitors and travelers over forest
roads grew from 3,000,000 to 11,000,000 during the years 1917-1924. This growth
in forest use was largely due to the automobile which, in turn, stimulated road
building in the forests. From 1916 through 1921, $33,000,000 were appropriated
by Congress for construction of roads and, to a lesser extent, trails in and
near the National Forests. The road development aided in controlling fires,
developing the forest resources for commodity use, and generally administering
the National Forests. The roads also brought the public in pursuit of
recreation – a use which foresters had not previously contended with and
were not prepared to handle. Chief Forester Greeley spoke in 1924 of the impact
of the mass use of forest roads by motorists:
the
need for public recreation on these vast areas of national forests became so
obvious, in fact it had become so great through the sheer force of people going
into these areas, taking possession of them, that the consideration of
recreation forced itself as a necessary and unavoidable development of the
national forests.[46]
The Forest
Service's lack of a recreation policy was changed in the face of competition
from the Park Service and the tremendous growth in recreation use.[47]
The Forest
Service officially included recreation among the other recognized uses of the
forest in 1921. This action significantly expanded the Forest Service's views
of the forest resource. Under Gifford Pinchot, the forest resource was
developed almost wholly for commodity use. This approach, according to
wilderness spokesman Aldo Leopold, was essentially an agronomist's approach and
excluded other values: This concept of the forest is
as
a crop to be planted, protected, tended and harvested when mature; hauled away
and converted into homes, schools, churches, furniture and a broad array of
wood and paper products. . . . This is the forest of industry. A forest whose
contribution to society can be readily measured in dollars but still not
realistically equated the aesthetic and recreational values of the standing
forest.
Concern for
recreation in the Forest Service effectively began in 1910 when Henry S. Graves
replaced Gifford Pinchot as Chief Forester. In 1910 a professional writer
employed by the Forest Service presented to the American Academy of Political
and Social Science a statement recognizing recreation values in the national
forests.
So
great is the value of national forest area for recreation, and so certain is
this value to increase with the growth of the country and shrinkage of the
wilderness, that even if the forest resources of wood and water were not to be
required by the civilization of the future, many of the forests ought certainly
to be preserved, in the interest of national health and well being, for
recreation use.[48]
In 1911, Graves
reversed Pinchot's earlier stand on administering the National Parks. Instead
of urging a shift of the Parks to the Department of Interior, Graves supported
the establishment of a separate bureau of National Parks.[49]
In 1918, a
report on recreation commissioned by Graves was published. In addition to
arguing against transferring all National Forest recreational activities and
lands to the Park Service, the report suggested some of the fundamental
policies for managing recreation in the National Forests.
Where
two or more . . . uses can be served at the same time on the same area they are
carried forward side by side, sometimes in actual cooperation. Whenever two of
these uses come into conflict, some authority determines which is likely to
render the greater public service. This then becomes the paramount use on the
area in question; other uses are secondary, and, if they interfere seriously
with the primary use, they are altogether excluded from the area. This policy
is so obvious, simple, and practical that it needs no defense.
Moreover
this policy need not be changed in the slightest when recreation comes to be
recognized in the list of major utilities. It is, in fact, the policy already
and inevitably adopted. On the principal areas of the National Forests
recreation is an incidental use; on some it is a paramount use; on a few it
becomes the exclusive use.[50]
In 1921, one
year after Greeley replaced Graves as Chief Forester, the Forest Service manual
contained a statement recognizing recreation values on an equal footing with
timber, water, and forage values.[51]
This recognition
was the key to preserving wilderness in the National Forests.
Many of the same
factors that induced the Forest Service to recognize recreation in 1921
influenced the promulgation of a wilderness policy in 1926. First, roads
diminished America's unpenetrated wilderness. "Wilderness is a resource
which can shrink but not grow," wrote Aldo Leopold in A Sand County
Almanac.[52]
Second, the
National Park Service under the dynamic leadership of Stephen Mather was bent
on enlarging the National Park System, usually at the expense of the National
Forest System.
In administering
the National Parks, the Park Service was instructed by its 1916 enacting
legislation "to conserve the scenery . . . and the wildlife . . . in such
a manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of
future generations.[53]
The Park Service was also "to promote and regulate the use of the federal
areas known as national parks . . . ."[54]
Inherent in the
legislation was a conflict between "conserving" and
"promoting" the Parks. Mather promoted. Besides working vigorously to
expand the National Park System, Mather promoted travel and developed roads and
facilities within the Parks. Plush accommodations built by private investment
and catering to a wealthy clientele occupied many of the most favorable sites
in the parks, to the detriment of the Parks' wilderness values. Wilderness
preservation as a Forest Service policy developed partly as a political
maneuver to gain the support of preservationists disaffected by the management
of the National Parks and to prevent further loss of National Forest lands
through National Park expansion.[55]
Third,
preservationist sentiment was growing. Scientists, emerging as a part of this
public voice, were among the first to oppose the construction of roads in the
wilderness. "Large tracts of land, representing every type of physiography
and of plant association, ought to be set aside as permanent reserves, and
properly protected against fire, and against every type of depredation,"
wrote F. B. Sumner, a member of the Ecological Society of America, in 1920.[56]
In 1921 the
American Association for the Advancement of Science passed a resolution urging
the protection of wilderness for scientific purposes. These two instances of
scientific support for preserving wilderness were only part of the growing
support for preservation.[57]
Yet, the influence of preservationist sentiment should not be overestimated.
The Forest Service's efforts to preserve wilderness in the 1920s were not the
result of a "grass roots" movement. Forest Service personnel,
especially Aldo Leopold, stood foremost in the battle to preserve America's
diminishing wilderness.[58]
Aldo Leopold's
efforts to preserve wilderness areas and to build support for the idea of
wilderness preservation earn him, wrote wilderness historian Gilligan, the
title, "Father of the National Forest Wilderness System."[59]
After Leopold
graduated from Yale Forestry School in 1909, he worked for the Forest Service
in game management in Arizona and New Mexico. The issue that sparked assistant
regional forester Leopold into motion was a proposal to cut a road through
700,000 acres of only slightly developed area then in the Gila National Forest.
In 1921 Leopold proposed that the area be maintained as roadless and as a
wilderness preserve. The proposal met little response. Leopold turned to the
media, writing articles suggesting that the area should be retained as
wilderness and not opened to commodity use. Furthermore, until a final decision
was made as to use, the Forest Service should protect potential wilderness
areas.
Three years
later, on June 3, 1924, after Aldo Leopold had worked with the forest
supervisor in developing policies for wilderness protection, District (Region)
III Forester F. C. Pooler established America's first National Forest
Wilderness - the 700,000 acre Gila Wilderness. This decision did not emanate
from Washington, D. C. By 1925, five additional wilderness areas had been
established.[60]
"It was
1925," writes J. P. Gilligan, "before wilderness as a land use
concept began to make headway in the public consciousness and in the thinking
of the Forester's office in Washington. This was primarily because of Leopold's
efforts."[61]
In July, 1928,
Aldo Leopold left the Forest Service to supervise wildlife population surveys
for the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Institute. Less than two years earlier,
however, Chief Forester Greeley formulated a wilderness policy for the Forest
Service.[62]
In 1926 Chief
Forester William B. Greeley approved of the Gila wilderness designation and
asked other districts to undertake similar action.[63]
Greeley was not oblivious to the problem of "locking up" commodity
use lands for wilderness. Wilderness must be measured against the "other
obligations and requirements of national forest administration," he wrote
in his 1926 Annual Report.[64]
In October,
1926, the Chief Forester took definite steps to formulate a wilderness policy,
summarizing the situation regarding wilderness in the Forest Service Bulletin:
In
wilderness areas recreation will be recognized as a highly important, if not
dominant, use; and the usual protection will be afforded camp grounds . . . .
Subject to such restrictions, the use of timber, forage and water should
ordinarily take its normal course. . . . The policy boils down to outlining
areas where the Service will build no roads and issue no recreation permits.[65]
In December
Greeley wrote to each western forester, officially acknowledging the
establishment of a wilderness area regional system in the national forests.[66]
Through his action, the U. S. Forest Service took the first step ever in
positive planning to protect wilderness.[67]
Wilderness
preservation was not immediately embraced by Forest Service personnel. Aldo
Leopold recognized this reluctance even before Greeley accepted wilderness
preservation as official policy: "It is undoubtedly a fact that foresters
as a whole and especially the Forest Service, tend to be unfavorable to the
wilderness idea." Yet, Leopold was confident that "they [would] come
around later."[68]
When, in 1921,
Leopold first published his ideas on wilderness, he met with strong opposition.
Greeley's 1926 policy also met with opposition. Although five district
foresters gave qualified support to preserving wilderness, the district
forester in Montana objected and urged that little publicity be given the
policy. A forest supervisor in California was also recalcitrant in the face of
Greeley's new policy. This supervisor described as improbable any developments
on roadless portions of his forest: "I do not see any danger of
encroaching on natural wilderness country. Therefore, I am not recommending the
setting aside of any wilderness areas for the Inyo [National Forest] at this
time."[69]
Arguments
against wilderness often maintained that the concept was not in line with
fundamental Forest Service philosophy of the greatest good for the greatest
number for the longest time. In practical terms, opponents viewed wilderness as
conflicting with attempts to develop wood, water, and forage values – the
commodity uses. Furthermore, fire control would be complicated. Besides,
wilderness designation would duplicate recreation policies of the Park Service.[70]
Summarizing
opposition to wilderness Gilligan writes, "Foresters weaned on Gifford
Pinchot's use principles did not wish to prostitute the flexibility required in
multiple use management by wilderness classifications which might prevent
changes to meet unpredictable future demand."[71]
Local forest
officers, many of whom opposed the wilderness idea, officially retained broad
discretion in designating wilderness – until 1929.
In 1929 the
Washington office submitted to the district foresters a new policy on
wilderness preservation: Regulation L-20. The origins of L-20 trace to L. F.
Kneipp, in charge of National Forest recreation planning. Kneipp recognized in
1928 the need for delimiting wilderness lands more formally. He drew up a
regulation establishing (with formal approval of the Chief Forester) primitive
areas and natural areas.
"Natural"
areas were for scientific use and were in response to demands for untouched
research areas. "Primitive" areas comprised lands formerly designated
"Wilderness" areas, a change reflecting the presence of man's
activities on lands so designated. As Kneipp, explained:
The
colloquial term "Wilderness Areas" most frequently used, is a
misnomer for areas prospected, grazed, logged or otherwise occupied or utilized
for a half-century, threaded with trails and telephone lines, bounded by
highways, scrutinized daily during the fire season by lookouts and now
traversed frequently by airplanes.[72]
When Kneipp's
proposals were submitted to the district foresters in 1928, they were not well
received. The foresters objected to designating areas in which further use of
resources would be forbidden and future boundary changes disallowed.
Emasculated, the regulation was finally submitted in 1929 by Chief Forester R.
Y. Stuart, the Forester replacing Greeley in 1928.
According to the
instructions sent with Regulation L-20, Primitive Area designation would not
"withdraw timber, forage or water resources from industrial use . . .
." Furthermore, allowances were made for securing adequate fire protection
– allowances which included roads, trails, telephone lines, and lookout
towers.[73]
Regulation L-20
was, according to J. P. Gilligan, "more nearly a request for the districts
to do as much as possible for the reservation of primitive conditions than a
definite restrictive regulation creating primitive areas.[74]
During the ten
years (1929-1939) when L-20 was in effect, 73 primitive areas varying in size
from 5000 acres to 3,000,000 acres and totaling 13,000,000 acres were set aside
in the west. Economic activity in these areas was not altogether excluded, as
allowed by Regulation L-20 and accompanying instructions. Twenty-three areas
definitely included future logging use and, therefore, roads in their
management plans. In eight areas besides the twenty-three, management plans
called for the construction of roads for fire protection. All but ten of the
primitive areas continued grazing.[75]
Wilderness
historian Gilligan maintains that the public did not fully understand the
primitive area policy. Although concessions to wood, water, and forage uses
were included in the policy, the public construed the policy revision as an
assertion of faith by the Forest Service in a new principle of land use.
Uncertainty about the new policy is evidenced in American Forests and Forest
Life. The magazine
correctly stated the Forest Service announcement:
the
primary purpose of the establishment of primitive areas is to prevent
unnecessary elimination or impairment of unique natural values . . . and to
conserve, so far as controlling economic considerations will permit, the
opportunity to the public to observe [pioneer] conditions . . . and engage in
outdoor recreation characteristic of that period . . . .
But then in the
following paragraph the magazine stated: "Permanent preservation of
wilderness areas in their natural state became a National Forest Policy in late
March [1929]." The National Parks Bulletin and other conservation publications
described primitive areas as no use areas, applying such adjectives as
"pristine," "virgin," and "primeval." Although
L-20 served its initial purpose of enabling the Forest Service to publicize
protecting wilderness lands, the policy as presented to the public was
misleading.[76]
One wilderness
advocate who considered L-20 inadequate and worked to change it was Robert
Marshall. Much like Pinchot and Muir before him, Marshall crusaded for a cause.
He dedicated himself to wilderness preservation. In 1930 while working towards
a doctoral degree in plant physiology, Marshall published an article appealing
for more wilderness areas.[77]
In The
People's Forests published in 1933, Marshall condemned the private forest
owners' devastation of the forest and urged public ownership for all potential
forest land: "The time has come when we must discard the unsocial view
that our woods are the lumbermen's and substitute the broader ideal that every
acre of woodland in the country is rightly a part of the people's
forests."[78]
In the book
Marshall recommended establishing additional National Forests and complimented
the Forest Service on its administration of the National Forest System. He was
not, however, altogether satisfied with the Forest Service's administration of
wilderness lands.
As one of the
authors of the recreation chapters in the 1933 Copeland Report, the first
comprehensive survey of America's forestry situation, Marshall recommended a
system for classifying recreation areas.[79]
His definition for wilderness classification was the same as proposed by
Leopold twelve years before and, like the primitive areas then under
management, allowed for some commodity use.[80]
Marshall also
sent a memorandum to L. F. Kneipp recommending that the Forest Service enlarge
existing primitive areas and establish new ones. These recommendations were
ill-received by regional foresters and their subordinates already content with
the existing system.
Marshall, after
his 1933 appointment as Director of Forestry in the Office of Indian Affairs,
became alarmed over the proposed construction of roads through areas he had
recommended for wilderness classification in the Copeland Report. Working
through the Secretary of Interior, Marshall was able to withhold funds for the
roads in prospective wilderness areas pending further study. Chief Forester F.
A. Silcox, who chief in 1935, called a staff meeting in response to Marshall's
action. Although the Forest Service eliminated plans for some roads, others
were approved.
In a letter to
the regional foresters, Silcox suggested more attention be given wilderness
values, especially in light of the continued threat of the Park Service and
Department of Interior: "If the Forest Service cannot fully realize the
potentialities of the areas it will have little valid grounds for objection to
a change in their administrative supervision."[81]
Robert Marshall
took action to overcome Forest Service inaction. Together with other
preservationists, Marshall in 1935 founded the Wilderness Society in the
"hope of repulsing the tyrannical ambition of civilization to conquer
every niche of the whole earth."[82]
Marshall also financially backed the society's publication, The Living
Wilderness, first
published in September, 1935.
The Wilderness
Society, from its founding in the 1930s, has become a leading environmental
advocacy group.[83] This,
Marshall's legacy in the conservation movement, was matched by his direct
influence on wilderness policies as a Forest Service employee.
In 1937, Chief
Forester Silcox appointed Marshall to head the Forest Service's Division of
Recreation and Lands. Marshall continued his crusade for wilderness
preservation between 1937 and November, 1939, when he died. Marshall
recommended nearly every undeveloped area over 100,000 acres on National
Forests for primitive classification. Marshall also worked to replace the L-20
regulation: "Personally, I have long criticized the present Forest Service
standards for primitive and natural areas. They are so broad as not to be very
significant."[84]
In criticizing
L-20, Robert Marshall was not alone.
The L-20
regulation was attacked from within and from without of the Forest Service.
From within, Assistant Forester L. F. Kneipp urged a more restrictive policy
during the early 1930s. In a 1930 letter to Regional Forester Show, Kneipp
recommended restrictions far beyond L-20:
.
. . a specific and detailed management plan should be developed for each area,
which will be clear cut and restrictive and mandatory. To avoid
misunderstanding or unintentional departure it should be prohibitive; that is,
with reference to each major activity it should tell what should not be done.
The urgent need is for a plan of management which clearly will make it
impossible, barring intentional departure, for any gradual infiltration of uses
or modifications to eventually impair or destroy the value of the area for the
purpose for which set aside.
Objections to
L-20 also came from the lower echelons in the decentralized administration of
the Forest Service. California's Regional Forester Show, for example, wrote to
Kneipp in 1929:
.
. . I dislike the idea of going into this simply as a graceful gesture. If we
say in effect 'The Forest Service believes a temporary halt in opening up
primitive areas is desirable, but will not stand in the way of public demands
that this be done in the future, and does not propose to do more than slow down
the exploitation,' then it is easy to foretell the outcome.
Outside the
Forest Service, Director A. B. Cammerer of the Park Service assailed the
primitive area policy. After describing the commodity uses tending to destroy
the wilderness lands, Cammerer said, "These are the compensations which
are given for maintaining certain wilderness aspects of such areas. Such
practices are not permitted in parks." These objections were probably only
superficial to Cammerer's more deep-seated mistrust of the Forest Service.
In 1939 the park
director flatly stated that the wilderness policies were created to rival the
National Park System. Pressure exerted by the National Park Service,
conservation organizations such as the Wilderness Society, and Forest Service
personnel, especially Robert Marshall – supportive of more restrictive
wilderness policies – finally forced the revision of Regulation L-20.[85]
Regulations U-1
and U-2 replaced L-20 on September 19, 1939, laying the foundation for present
Forest Service policies on wilderness. Overall, the U regulations stipulated a
large amount of protection and implied a long term commitment previously
lacking in administrative wilderness policies.[86]
Regulation U-1
designated as "wilderness areas" tracts greater than 100,000 acres.
Only with the approval of the Secretary of Agriculture could wilderness areas
be created or their boundaries revised. Regulation U-2 designated as "wild
areas" tracts between 5,000 and 100,000 acres in size. The Chief of the Forest
Service could create wild areas and authorize revision of their boundaries.
The essential
differences between Regulations U-1 and U-2 and the old L-20 Regulation were
that roads and commercial timber cutting would be absolutely prohibited. The
Forest Service would notify the public ninety days before an area could be
established, modified, or eliminated. If such changes were opposed, the
regional forester would hold public hearings and submit the testimony and his
recommendations to the Chief (for wild areas) or to the Secretary of
Agriculture (for wilderness areas).
The U-1 and U-2
Regulations did not, however, apply to primitive areas established under L-20.
A primitive area was redesignated either wilderness or wild only after a new
management plan was developed and after boundary adjustments eliminated
potential commercial timber, mineral zones, and private lands. Overall, the U
regulations implied, wrote Gilligan, that "Wilderness and wild areas would
be as permanent and unchangeable as possible under Forest Service
administration."[87]
Wilderness
advocates hailed the new regulations; many people living near primitive areas
dependent on the forest resources did not. Local opposition to "locking
up" resources pressed upon forest supervisors who, in turn, expressed
dissatisfaction with the U Regulations. C. N. Woods, regional forester at
Ogden, Utah suggested that the policies on primitive areas were becoming more
restrictive than policies of the Park Service, deviating from the Forest
Service's multiple-use policy.[88]
In order to
allay criticism in certain localities, the Washington office issued a directive
in March, 1940, enabling a delay in reclassifying primitive areas. The
directive also asked the regions to consult the head office if development was
planned "in any existing primitive area, which would not be allowed under
Regulation U-1 or U-2 even though the present management plan may permit
it."[89]
The Forest
Service announced to the public that although primitive areas had not been
reclassified as either wilderness or wild, they were being managed under the
new regulations pending reclassification. The public was not informed, however,
of the likelihood of future boundary changes.[90]
In the directive postponing reclassification of some primitive areas, the
Washington office recognized the need to retain the public's faith:
In
view of the announced policy of the Service and the Secretary's approval of
Regulations U-1 and U-2, it is believed that we must be very careful in
managing our present primitive areas so as not to break faith with the
expectations of those groups interested in the preservation of wilderness
conditions.[91]
That the Forest
Service could not retain this faith was the undoing of administrative
wilderness.
Support for
administrative wilderness eroded away during the 1940s and 1950s. The post
World War II economic boom placed increasing demands on the resources of the
National Forests. As Americans reached new heights of affluence and gained more
leisure time, they looked to the National Forests for recreation.[92]
Increasingly,
conflicts centered on wilderness. The Forest Service was caught on this
battleground: on one side, extraction interests argued that wilderness
preservation was tantamount to locking up resources. On the other side and
increasingly vocal, wilderness advocates censured the Forest Service's policies
on wildland protection as inadequate.
Reclassification
of primitive areas was, perhaps, the major source of agency criticism by
wilderness advocates. The process was slowed by local economic interests whose
opposition was recognized by the March, 1940, directive described above. In the
thirteen years following the implementation of Regulations U-1 and U-2, less
than one-third of the seventy-six primitive areas created under L-20 were
reclassified either wilderness or wild. This was, at least in part, due to the
careful examination of fire protection plans and anticipated timber needs
preceding the actual redesignation.[93]
Reclassification
often involved boundary adjustments to exclude commercially valuable land and
to retain "wilderness" character. Removing valuable timberlands and
reducing the size of many former primitive areas bred skepticism among the
wilderness advocates. The Forest Service appeared to be yielding wilderness
lands in the face of mounting demands for the forest resources.[94]
The agency
appeared reluctant even to support wilderness preservation. Such an
interpretation is evinced in Gilligan's concluding discussion in 1954 on the
history of administrative wilderness:
Since
less than one-third of the Forest Service primitive areas have been
reclassified . . ., this suggests there are real difficulties existing which
prevent preservation of exact areas for any length of time in an undeveloped or
wilderness condition.[95]
From this milieu
emerged wilderness with statutory protections embodied in the Wilderness Act of
1964. This act, according to Forest Service historian H. K. Steen,
"reflects lack of faith on the part of many recreationists in multiple use
and the Forest Service."[96]
Legislation
creating statutory wilderness was first presented to Congress in 1956,
culminating efforts begun in the late 1940s. After World War II, renewed
interest in classifying and managing wilderness extended to Congress. In 1948 a
House subcommittee[97]
asked the Legislative Reference Service of the Library of Congress for a report
on the status of efforts to preserve wilderness. The report, completed in 1949
by C. F. Keyser, stated that before too long "original wilderness . . .
will have disappeared entirely. . . . If then, there is reason for preserving
substantial. portions of the remaining wilderness, it must be decided upon
before it is too late."
In 1951 Howard
Zahniser, executive director of the Wilderness Society, drew upon the Keyser
report in a presentation to the Wilderness Society's second biennial wilderness
conference: "How Much Wilderness Can We Afford to Lose?" Zahniser
argued for statutory Wilderness as a means of stabilizing the wilderness
system, of countering the pressure of commodity interests, and of securing
authority to stop mining and construction of dams – authority the Forest
Service lacked. In 1953 Gilligan[98]
reviewed the limitations of Forest Service authority and administration as it
pertained to wilderness preservation. In the doctoral dissertation and, in
1954, during a speech before the Society of American Foresters, Dr. Gilligan
called for statutory wilderness.
Senator Hubert
Humphrey became interested after listening to Zahniser's arguments presented in
1955 to the National Citizens Planning Conference on Parks and Open Space for
People. On June 7, 1956, Humphrey and eight other senators introduced the first
Wilderness Bill. Humphrey's action initiated a legislative battle that lasted
more than eight years.[99]
Wilderness
legislation proved to be an emotionally charged issue. Proponents of statutory
wilderness included Howard Zahniser, probably the leading advocate of
legislation in its long passage through Congress.[100]
David Brower was
executive director of the Sierra Club during the 1950s. Working to secure
protection for wilderness, Brower severed the amiable ties between the Sierra
Club and the Forest Service. The Sierra Club became the most militant of
organizations supporting statutory wilderness and a potent force in bringing
the wilderness advocacy cause to fruition.[101]
Brower supported statutory wilderness on the arguments that administrative
wilderness was too flexible:
Surely
there must be a role for at least two branches of the government of a nation if
something as irreplaceable as wilderness [is] at stake on the nation's land.
The Executive Branch could designate and guard it, but the Legislative Branch
should at least recognize it and grant wilderness an automatic stay of
execution. . . .[102]
Brower's
argument was akin to the argument of Congressman John Saylor who introduced
wilderness legislation in the House as a companion to Humphrey's Senate bill.
Wilderness areas, Saylor wrote, "prior to enactment of the Wilderness Bill
[enjoyed] only the protection of the executive or more specifically the
Secretary of Agriculture, who could by the stroke of the pen remove all or part
of such areas from wilderness." Such a course was irreversible because of
the rapid growth of America: this act "once done is done forever."[103]
Opponents of
statutory wilderness included, at first, the Forest Service and the Park
Service and – to the end – lumber, mining, power, and irrigation
interests.[104]
Of the economic
interests arrayed against statutory wilderness protection, the timber industry
probably had the most to lose. This industry viewed recreational demands in
general and wilderness demands in particular as the greatest threat to
commercial forest land.[105]
This stance is epitomized by A. G. Hall in the February, 1962, issue of American
Forests:
A
new threat to the commercial forests, the fear that productive forest land may
be set aside for recreational and wilderness areas, has now added new impetus
to the spirit of co-operation [between private and public foresters, loggers,
engineers, and forest industry managers]. Many westerners feel that another
common enemy has developed, one that could rank with fire, insects or diseases,
if allowed to run unchecked.[106]
Whereas the
timber industry was concerned with one forest use, the Forest Service feared
statutory wilderness would endanger "multiple use". These fears were
allayed when Congress passed the Multiple Use-Sustained Yield Act of 1960.
The National
Forests had long been managed under the principles of "multiple use"
and "sustained yield," principles scarcely mentioned in statutory
law.[107]
The source of these principles in the Forest Service is Secretary Wilson's 1905
letter to Pinchot. The letter directed the Forest Service to establish policies
from the standpoint of "the greatest good of the greatest number in the
long run." The lands were to be administered for "permanent
use."
In 1960 the
Secretary of Agriculture elaborated on the importance of Wilson's letter:
The
Secretarial directive of 1905 by its references to several resources, to
permanence, to use, and to goods of the whole people, and by use of the phrase
[permanent use] . . . . laid the groundwork and was the genesis, for both the
sustained-yield and multiple-use policies which have been followed for so many
years.[108]
Concerning the
multiple use concept, at first there was little controversy. Demands on the
forest were satisfied with sufficient resources. By the 1950s, however, the
resources were no longer sufficient for the demand. Speaking for the Forest
Service in 1955, Chief Richard McArdle said, "We are rapidly leaving
behind the custodial state in management."[109]
The problem of balancing recreation with commodity use was particularly
delicate, writes a director of forestry at West Virginia University:
The
only recourse for the forest administrator in this dilemma is to remain acutely
sensitive to the impulses he receives from the political sphere, from citizens,
and from organized groups. It is not difficult to conjure up an image of the
forest administrator adjusting his various uses to the point where the screams
emanating from the various interest groups have about the same decibel count.[110]
From this view,
Congressionally designated wilderness threatened this delicate balance, for it
would place land in dominant use and would not give the Forest Service enough
flexibility in managing the forests. Wilderness legislation "would strike
at the heart of the multiple-use policy of national forest
administration," testified the Forest Service in 1957. The Forest Service
supported a bill recognizing multiple use and sustained yield principles in the
forests, extending the principle of sustained yield beyond timber to embrace
other renewable resources, and protecting the forests from over-use in the face
of increasing economic pressure.[111]
The 1960
Multiple Use-Sustained Yield Act reassured timber interests with a phrase that
the legislation was to be "supplemental to, but not in derogation of"
the 1897 Organic Act (which referred specifically to timber and water). The
bill mollified wilderness advocates, especially the Sierra Club, with a
statement that wilderness was "consistent" with the multiple use
concept. In 1960 the Multiple Use-Sustained Yield Act became law. Already by
1958, however, the Forest Service no longer officially opposed wilderness
legislation. A major obstacle on the road to statutory wilderness was gone.[112]
Opposition to
wilderness legislation was further weakened in 1962 by the report of the ORRRC
(the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission). This commission had been
established in 1958 to inventory and evaluate outdoor recreational resources
and to estimate the resources needed by 1976 and by the year 2000. The ORRRC
contracted the Wildlife Research Center at the University of California at
Berkeley to consider the place of wilderness in the national pattern of outdoor
recreation.
This wilderness
study, directed by Dr. James P. Gilligan and released as part of the ORRRC
report, was "made under the inescapable influence of intense public and
Congressional involvement with pending legislation to establish a national
policy of wilderness preservation."[113]
Primitive
areas satisfy a deep-seated human need occasionally to get far away from the
works of man. Prompt and effective action to preserve their unique
inspirational, scientific, and cultural values on an adequate scale is
essential, since once destroyed they can never be restored.
Land use
agencies (the Forest Service and, to a lesser degree, the Park Service) were in
the dilemma of committing land to wilderness "in the face of laws designed
to promote exploitation." Furthermore, the Forest Service lacked adequate
power to fully protect wilderness: "National forest reserved areas are
subject to all the preemptive legislation which applies to public land in
general . . . Loss of national forest wilderness may come about through
intrusion of incompatible developments over which the Forest Service has little
or no control." Therefore, the ORRRC endorsed legislation for protecting
wilderness:
There is a
widespread feeling, which the Commission shares, that the Congress should take
action to assure the permanent reservation of these and similar suitable areas
in national forests, national parks, wildlife refuges, and other lands in
federal ownership.[114]
Opponents to
statutory wilderness such as the AFA who had placed hopes on the ORRRC report
were thwarted. Editor of the AFA's publication American Forests, James Craig, was forced to conclude
"the substance of the document's conclusions in regard to wilderness is
that there also 'ought to be a law' to protect it properly."[115]
In the spring of
1962 President John F. Kennedy urged Congress to enact wilderness legislation
on the recommendations of the ORRRC's report. On September 4, 1964, after an eight-year
battle in Congress involving the introduction of sixty-five separate bills,
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Wilderness Act.[116]
The Wilderness
Act established a National Wilderness Preservation System
[i]n
order to assure that an increasing population, accompanied by expanding
settlement and growing mechanization, does not occupy and modify all areas
within the United States and its possessions, leaving no lands designated for
preservation and protection in their natural condition . . . .
Land in its
"natural" condition is wilderness:
A
wilderness in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate
the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its
community are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not
remain.
The Wilderness
Act reclassified as statutory wilderness the 9.1 million acres of National
Forest land earlier designated wilderness by the Forest Service. Within ten
years, the Forest Service was to review 5.5 million acres classified as
primitive for possible inclusion in the wilderness system. During the same
period, nearly 40 million acres in the National Park System and in the National
Wildlife Refuge and Range System were to be reviewed for incorporating appropriate
lands into the National Wilderness Preservation System.
The Wilderness
Act also placed strict limitations on managing the wilderness areas. Lumbering,
road building, and other commercial activity (except mining exploration which
will be prohibited beginning 1984) are prohibited. Established uses such as the
use of aircraft or motorboats may continue subject to restrictions by the
Secretary of Agriculture.[117]
Wilderness
preservation has indeed come far. The National Wilderness Preservation System,
of which the Sawtooth Wilderness became a part in 1972, is a symbol of
foresight and dedication.
During the last
century, the ideas of visionaries such as George Catlin, Henry David Thoreau,
and George Perkins Marsh began to alter America's views on wilderness.
Straddling the 19th and 20th centuries, John Muir publicized the need for
wilderness preservation through his writings, by organizing the Sierra Club,
and especially through his efforts to save from damming the Hetch Hetchy Valley
in Yosemite.
During the first
half of this century, a few officials of the U. S. Forest Service embodied
their ideas in Forest Service policy: Aldo Leopold, L. F. Kneipp, and Robert
Marshall were preeminent in originating and shaping administrative wilderness
policies. And finally, during the 1950s, and early '60s, Harold Zahniser of the
Wilderness Society and David Brower of the Sierra Club stood foremost among
many who advocated statutory protection for wilderness. This protection was
ensured when Congress passed the Wilderness Act of 1964, securing "for the
American people of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring
resource of wilderness."[118]
[1] Quoted by David Brower, ėWilderness and
the Constant Advocate,î The Living Wilderness, Spring-Summer 1964, p. 43.
[2] In a letter from McClure to Richard P.
Hronek in defense of his position on mining in the White Clouds. Hronek was
managing editor of Idaho Statesman.
August 12, 1969.
[3] Letter to Bureau of Sports Fisheries and
Wildlife regional coordinator in Portland Oregon, from Travis S. Roberts,
acting regional director. March 4, 1970.
[4] John H. Merriam, ėIdaho White Clouds:
Wilderness in Trouble,î The Living Wilderness, Spring-Summer 1970, p. 34. The 1872 law
provides that ė'all valuable mineral deposits in lands belonging to the United
States . . . shall be free and open to exploration and purchase. . . . 'î
Russell D. Butcher, ėLet's stop Mining in our National Parks and Wilderness
Areas,î American Forests,
September 1970, p. 29.
[6] Rod Hunt, ėErnie Day Leaves his Mark in
Field of The Idaho Statesman,
23 April 1972, p. 2-E. These publications included Life, The Christian Science Monitor, and The New York Times. Merriam p. 34.
[7] Merriam, pp. 34, 37. The Forest Service's
hesitancy was probably intentional. First, the issue was politically explosive.
Travis Roberts writes: ėThere are political problems associated with this
operation. The Governor of Idaho is strongly supporting this mining venture.
The Press (The Idaho Statesman)
opposes the mining because of the effect on the environment. There are large
factions in the State of Idaho that support both sides of this problem, which
may explain the reluctance of the Forest Service to move.î Second, Roberts also
recognized that issuing the permit would open the area to mining: ėUndoubtedly
such a road would open up this country to explosive mining operations and other
encroaching influences. The Forest Service is studying several methods of
access. . . . They are hesitating to issue a permit. They realize the
implications involved.î
[8] Chris Carlson, ėMcClure Swallows Bait;
Stands alone in Blasting Sawtooth Report,î The Idaho Falls Post-Register, 19 April 1972.
[9] To an April 5, 1972, public release from
Governor Andrus, the report explicitly states that mining should not be allowed
in the White Clouds area until a national need for molybdenum can be shown. The
report was submitted by the White Clouds Task Force which was composed of six
Department of Interior agencies, two other federal agencies, and a
representative from the Governor's office.
[11] ėThe Sawtooth Victory,î The Idaho
Statesman, 28 August
1972, p. 4.
[12] The course of legislation during the
White Clouds controversy was complex. The brief account given above is summarized
from the detailed account by Ann Daily, ėLong Journey over for Sawtooth NRA
bill,î Twin Falls Times-News,
27 August 1972, p. 38. Virlis Fischer, ėThe Seesaw in the Sawtooth,î American
Forests, November 1966,
p. 37, was also consulted.
[13] Richard P. Hronek, ėScenic Sawtooth
Recreation Area dedicated by top Idaho officials,î The Idaho Statesman, 2 September 1972.
[14] Ralph Waldo Emerson, ėNature,î Works,
pp. 15, 16, 38, quoted by Nash, pp. 86, 89.
[16] Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or Life in the Woods
(New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, Inc.), p. 74.
[18] Gilligan, p. 11; Nash, p. 101.
[20] Nash, p.
108; Gilligan, p. 19.
[21] Gilligan, pp. 27-28.
[22] Gilligan, pp. 25-31. This amendment still
stands as the controlling authority within the Park, although subsequent
amendments permit damming for water supplies and highways through the preserve.
[26] Pinchot, New Ground, p. 31.
[27] Robinson, pp. 155-156.
[29] Millard C. Davis, ėThe Influence of
Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman on the Early American Naturalists - John Muir and
John Burroughs,î The Living Wilderness, Winter 1966-1967, p. 18.
[32] A Plan to Save the Forests,î Century,
1895, p. 631, quoted in Nash, p. 134.
[34] Gilligan suggests that Pinchot probably
meant regulated grazing. However, since Pinchot was politically sensitive to
the need of stockmen's support for the Reserves, he probably omitted this
detail. P. 52.
[35] L. M. Wolfe, Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir
(New
York:
Alfred A. Knoph, 1951), pp. 275-276, quoted in Gilligan, p. 52.
[36] John Muir, The Yosemite (New York:
The Century Co., 1912), p. 262.
[38] Udall, pp. 121-122; Gilligan, p. 53.
[39] Quoted in Gilligan, p. 53
[40] Letter from John Muir to Robert Underwood
Johnson, January 1, 1914, quoted in Nash, p. 180.
[42] Quoted in Udall, p. 122.
[43] Gilligan, p. 71; Hays, pp. 196-197.
[44] Robinson, p. 120; Gilligan, pp. 71-72.
[45] Washington D.C. Evening Star, 11 January 1915, quoted in Steen, p.
117.
[46] In a speech before the National
Conference on Outdoor Recreation. Gilligan, p. 95.
[48] Treadwell Cleveland, Jr., ėNational
Forests as Recreation Grounds,î Annuals of the American Academy of Political
and Social Science, xxxv
(1910), Part 2, pp. 241-247, quoted in Gilligan, pp. 62-63
[49] Gilligan, p. 63. Steen (p. 115) maintains
that Graves opposed the creation of a new agency in the Department of Interior
to administer the Parks. Steen argues that Graves believed that the Parks
should be retained as part of the National Forest System, their administration
being retained in the Department of Agriculture. Gilligan, (p. 64), however,
presents evidence to the contrary. In a letter to the Sierra Club in 1911,
Graves wrote: ėI am surprised and exceedingly sorry to hear that there is an
impression that the Forest Service is in any way opposed to the policy of
national parks. This idea is entirely contrary to the facts, for I am, and
always have been emphatically in favor of a vigorous national park policy.î ėAt
one time I believed that the best plan would be to combine the administration
of the national parks and the national forests. While this unquestionably would
be the most economical method of administration, there are various reasons why
it may be wiser to have a separate bureau of national parks. I have, therefore,
given my hearty approval to the idea of a bureau of national parks and have
advocated it both in private and in my public address.î VIII (1911), 139.
[50] F. A. Waugh, Recreational Uses on the
National Forests (Washington: Govt. Print. Off.), pp. 27-28, quoted in
Gilligan, pp. 74-75.
[51] McConnell, p. 18; Gilligan, p. 76.
[53] Quoted in Udall, p. 124.
[54] Quoted in Gilligan, p. 71
[55] Gilligan, pp. 71-72, 107-111, 221; J.
Alfred Hall, ėThe Battle for Wilderness: Another Skirmish in the Continuing
Fight,î American Forests,
February 1962, p. 15.
[56] Sumner, ėThe Need for a more Serious
Effort to Rescue a Few Fragments of Vanishing Nature,î Scientific Monthly, X (1920), p. 236, quoted in Gilligan,
p. 77.
[57] Gilligan, pp. 76-79, 99-101.
[60] Robinson, pp. 156-157; Nash, pp. 183-186;
Gilligan, pp. 83-86; Steen, pp. 154-155. These wildernesses are now the Grand
Tetons National Park, Teton Primitive Area, Absaroka Primitive Area, Idaho
Primitive Area, and Bob Marshall Wilderness Area. Gilligan, p. 85.
[62] Nash, p. 191; Gilligan, p. 119.
[63] ė[T]he frontier has long ceased to be a
barrier to our civilization,î wrote the Chief Forester.
[65] ėWilderness Recreation Areas,î 18 October
1926, quoted in Gilligan, pp. 101-102.
[66] Greeley requested that the foresters
review plans for road construction and special use plans to ensure that
wilderness values be maintained. Stipulations for the preservation included:
(1) Size: Determined by natural factors and location of roads needed for
protection. ėThe size of the wilderness area is not, in my judgment, important
or subject to standardization.î (2) Economic Use: Grazing was not inconsistent
with Greeley's conception of wilderness. Timber and water uses that might
emerge later would be dealt with on the basis of priority use. (3) Recreation
Use: The only limitation on the number of people entering a wilderness should
be the natural limitation extending from the modes of travel possible. (4)
Recreation Improvements: Improved campgrounds would not ordinarily be needed.
Letter to district (regional) foresters, Dec. 30, 1926, in Gilligan, pp.
104-105.
[67] Gilligan, pp. 101-105; McCloskey, p. 296.
[68] Letter to F. Reet, an industrial
spokesman, 25 February 1926, quoted in Steen, p. 155.
[69] Letter to District III forester from
Forest Supervisor Boothe, 4 January 1928, quoted in Gilligan, pp. 105-107.
[70] Robinson, pp. 156-157.
[72] ėWhat Should We Call Protected Recreation
Areas?î, American Planning and Civic Annual, 1 (1929), p. 34, quoted in
Gilligan, p. 127.
[73] ėInstructions Regarding Regulation L-20
sent to District Foresters and Forest Supervisors,î quoted in full by Gilligan,
vol. 2, Appendix A, pp. 2- 3.
[74] Gilligan, vol. 1, p. 126. The section of
Regulation L-20 pertaining to primitive areas: ėThe Chief of the Forest Service
shall determine, define, and permanently record. . . . A series of areas to be
known as primitive areas, and within which, to the extent of the
Department's authority, will be maintained primitive conditions of
environment, transportation, habitation, and subsistence, with a view to
conserving the value of such areas for purpose of public education, inspiration,
and recreation. Within any areas so designated, (except for permanent
improvements needed-in Experimental Forests and Ranges) no occupancy under the
special-use permit shall be allowed, or the construction of permanent
improvements by any public agency be permitted, except as authorized by the
Chief of the Forest Service or the Secretary.î Note: Underlined areas were
deleted by a change in the regulation August 7, 1930. The phrase enclosed in
parentheses was added at the time of this change. L-20 was effected July 12,
1929; amended August 7, 1930; revoked September 19, 1939.
[75] McCloskey, p. 296; Gilligan, vol. 1, pp.
133-134.
[76] Gilligan, vol. 1, p. 128-131.
[77] ėThe Problem of the Wilderness,î The
Scientific Monthly, XXX
(1930), pp. 141-148, as cited by Gilligan, vol. 1, p. 174.
[78] (New York: Harrison Smith and Robert
Haas), p. 219, quoted in Gilligan, vol. 1, pp. 175-176.
[79] The published report was entitled ėA
National Plan for American Forestryî but was popularly known as the Copeland
Report since a senator by that name introduced the Senate Resolution for the
survey.
[80] Marshall defined wilderness areas as:
ėRegions which contain no permanent inhabitants, possess no means of mechanical
conveyance, and are sufficiently spacious so that a person might spend at least
a week or two of travel in them without crossing his own tracks. The dominant
attribute of such areas was the preservation, as nearly as possible, of
primitive environment, and the requirement of individual effort for survival.î
U. S. Senate Document No. 12 '73rd Congress, lst Session, ėA National Plan for
American Forestry,î Washington: Govt. Print. Off., 1933, p. 471, quoted in
Gilligan, vol. 1, p. 177.
[81] Gilligan, vol. 1, pp. 174-182.
[82] Quoted by John A. Zivnuska, ėThe Managed
Wilderness,î American Forests,
August 1973, p. 19.
[83] Gilligan, vol. 1, p. 182; Anthony Netboy,
ėWilderness and the American,î American Forests, April 1969, p. 50.
[84] Letter to W. B. Wharton, 14 December
1937, quoted by Gilligan, pp. 192-193.
[85] Gilligan, vol. 1, pp. 138-139, 162,
193-194.
[86] Robinson, pp. 157-158.
[87] Gilligan, vol. 1, pp. 196-198; vol. 2, p.
6.
[88] Letter to the Chief Forester, 24 February
1940, as cited in Gilligan, p. 202.
[89] Forest Service Circular No. U-8, issued
March 30, 1940, cited by Gilligan, vol. 2, p 9.
[90] Gilligan, vol. 1, pp. 201-203, 222-223.
[91] Letter to forest supervisors, from
regional offices regarding the management of primitive areas and quoting
sections of Circular U-8, 30 March 1940, cited in Gilligan, vol. 2, p. 9.
[92] Robinson, p. 121. From 1956 to 1970,
visits in National Parks, National Forests, and Wildlife Refuges grew from 115
million to 367 million. From U. S. Dept. of Interior/Bureau of Outdoor
Recreation, Selected Outdoor Recreation Statistics (1971), cited in Robinson,
p. 15.
[93] The procedure for reclassifying primitive
areas is outlined in Circular U-1, cited in full in Gilligan, vol. 2, pp. 8-9.
[95] Gilligan, vol. 1, p. 225.
[97] Conservation of Wildlife Resources of the
Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries.
[98] ėThe Development of Policy and
Administration of Forest Service Primitive and Wilderness Areas in the Western
United States,î 2 vols. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan, 1954).
[99] Zivnuska, p. 19; Steen, p. 304; Michael
McCloskey, ėThe Wilderness Act of 1964: Its Background and Meaning,î Oregon
Law Review 45 (1966):
297-298.
[101] Steen, pp. 301-302; John A. McPhee, Encounters
with the Archdruid (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971), p. 16.
According to Forest Service historian Steen, (p. 303), Brower first became
attuned to inadequacies in Forest Service policy on the issue of Deadman Creek.
The area involved consisted of 3000 acres of one of few remaining virgin stands
of Jeffrey pine. When the Forest Service announced plans to log the area and
remove diseased trees, Brower and the Sierra Club stood opposed. Steen writes,
ėTo log in unique stands of low-quality commercial timber for the purpose of
providing logs to local sawmills already doomed to shut down caused Brower to
doubt Forest Service judgment.î Brower's first campaign as executive director
of the Sierra Club was against the Bureau of Reclamation's proposed dam that
would have submerged large section.–. of Dinosaur National Monument. The
struggle became the biggest conservation issue since Hetch Hetchy. ėThe
Dinosaur Battle is noted,î writes John McPhee, staff writer for The New
Yorker, ėas the first
time that all the scattered interests of modern conservation – sportsmen,
ecologists, wilderness preservers, park advocates, and so forth – were
drawn together in a common cause. Brower, more than anyone else, drew them
together, fashioning the coalition, assembling witnesses.î Brower succeeded:
The dam project was dropped. Pp. 164-165.
[102] David Brower, ėForeward,î The Meaning
of Wilderness to Science (Sierra Club, 1960), p. vi.
[103] John P. Saylor, ėWhat the Wilderness Act
Does,î The Living Wilderness,
Spring-Summer 1964, p. 11.
[106] Albert G. Hall, ėWashington Lookout,î American
Forests, January 1960,
p. 7.
[107] In 1960 Assistant Secretary of
Agriculture Peterson wrote, ėOther than the sustained-yield unit act of 1944
(58 stat. 132), which is of limited and local application, there is no specific
statutory recognition or directive to administer national-forest resources on a
sustained-yield basis. Furthermore, the references above cited relate only to
timber, whereas all of the renewable resources of the national forests should
be, and are being, administered under sustained-yield principles.î Crafts, Part
1, P. 14.
[108] Letter to Congress introducing Multiple
Use-Sustained Yield Act, from Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Peterson, as
quoted by Crafts, Part 1, p. 14.
[109] U. S. Forest Service Information
Digest, 5 April 1955, as
quoted in McConnell, p. 21.
[110] Quoted in Robinson, p. 269.
[111] When passed, the bill defined multiple
use and sustained yield for the first time in statute. ėMultiple Useî was
defined as ėthe management of all the various renewable surface resources of
the national forests so that they are utilized in the combination that will
best meet the needs of the American people; making the most judicious use of
the land for some or all of these resources or related services over areas
large enough to provide sufficient latitude for periodic adjustments in use to
conform to changing needs and conditions; that some land will be used for less
– than all the resources; and harmonious and coordinated management of
the various resources, each with the other, without impairment of the
productivity of the land, with consideration being given to the relative values
of the various resources, and not necessarily the combination of uses that will
give the greatest dollar return or the greatest unit output.î
ėSustained
yieldî was defined as ėthe achievement and maintenance in perpetuity of a
high-level annual or regular output of the various renewable resources of the
national forests without impairment of the productivity of the land.î Quoted in
Robinson, p. 56; quoted in Crafts, Part 2, p. 31.
[112] Robinson, pp. 159-160; Steen, 306-309;
McCloskey, p. 299; Crafts, Part 1, p. 14.
[113] Michael Nadel, ėWilderness and the
Outdoor Recreation Resources Report,î The Living Wilderness, Spring-Summer 1962, p. 8.
[114] Nadel, pp. 8-13; ėOutdoor Recreation
Review,î The Livinq Wilderness,
Winter-Spring 1962, pp. 4-7; Henry Dworshak et al., ėMinority Views on S. 174,î
The Living Wilderness,
Autumn-Winter 1961-1962, p. 38; Steen, pp. 312-313.
[115] James B. Craig, ėORRRC Report,î American
Forests, February 1962,
p. 10.
[116] Frank Church, ėWhither Wilderness,î American
Forests, July 1977, p.
11; McCloskey, p. 301.
[117] PL 88-577, quoted in full in McCloskey.