Wilderness Bill

For the second time in two years the Senate has passed the Wilderness Bill by a huge majority. In the House the bill is now under scrutiny again by the Interior Committee which finally sent to the floor last year an amended version that was more like a poaching permit than a wilderness preservation act. Colorado Democrat Wayne Aspinall, committee chairman and leader of the opposition insists that the bill would "lock up" valuable commercial tracts and jeopardize Congressional authority over Federal lands. The first charge is both pernicious and absurd; the other is merely absurd.

A "lock up" of commercially valuable public lands would hurt the West badly, but this frightening phrase does not describe fairly the provisions of the bill. With a few minor exceptions, the approximately thirty million acres of the proposed National Wilderness Preservation System have already been severely restricted or withdrawn completely from commercial use during the past 30 years. If the Wilderness Bill has any economic effect, is will be to increase business opportunities by reopening a few of these areas, following the extensive resource surveys which the bill requires. Until Federal protection was granted, beginning in 1931, the virgin lands survived only because they had very few commercial attractions. Any adjustments from the surveys, therefore, would be small.

A more important economic point is that regardless of the resources of the wild regions, the country's lumber, mining, and grazing needs can easily be met by other lands now open to commercial use. In 1961 commercial tracts in the national forest grew about one billion more board feet of lumber than was cut. Existing mines are able to produce excess supplies of almost all indigenous metals and minerals. Finally, an Interior Department study has shown that proper management of present grazing lands could yield in fifty years a 250% increase of forage.

The enemies of the bill claim that it will impair Congressional jurisdiction over public lands. The opposite is true. Since all the areas to comprise the Wilderness System have been closed to commercial exploitation by Executive decrees, Congress exercises no direct control. Under the current measure, Congress would gain a veto over each separate area the President proposes for inclusion in the Wilderness System. The opponents actual, but unstated, objection is that this procedure bypasses the Interior Committee. They know that the votes for a floor veto would be hard for them to muster.

If the Wildnerness Bill is approved, its major effect will be merely to protect the virgin lands by law rather than Executive order and to establish uniform standards of administration, which are now absent.

The bill's detractors kept this simple measure in Senate Committee for five years. Judging from the large majorities it received upon finally reaching the floor last year and this year, the only important barrier remaining is the House Interior Committee, where the commercial interests can concentrate their pressure.

"The land was our before we were the land's," said the late Robert Frost at President Kennedy's inauguration. But unfortunately too many Americans still think of themselves as possessors rather than proprietors and think of the land as a warehouse rather than a home. Passage of the Wildnerness Bill would have a salutary effect on the country's outlook and can be accomplished now with scarcely any economic injury to anyone. But the longer passage is delayed, than the less incentive there will be for proper use of the lands, the further commercial operations will advance into the wilderness area, and the more difficult passage will become.