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<br />o OJ789 <br /> <br />'. <br /> <br />One of my long-time friends, Ted Trueblood, challenged <br />the purity doctrine of the Forest Service in the September <br />1975 issue of Field & Stream.s As Ted put it, the Foresl <br />Service with its purist doclrine is trying to scuttle the Wilder- <br />ness Act. In arguing the case, Ted refers to requirements <br />which make outfitter operations difficult, to fish and wild- <br />life management activities which limit the enjoyment of <br />hunters and fishermen, to the exclusion of deserving Idaho <br />areas from wilderness classification because they contain <br />minor evidence of man's prior activities, and perhaps most <br />tragic of all, to the burning of historic cabins to eliminate <br />the evidence of earlier human habitation. <br /> <br /> <br />.. <br />... <br /> <br />Such policies are misguided. If Congress had intended <br />that wilderness be administered in so stringent a manner, <br />we would never have written the law as we did. We wouldn't <br />have provided for the possibility of insect, disease and fire <br />control. We wouldn't have allowed private inholdings to <br />remain. We wouldn't have excluded condemnation as the <br />means for forcibly acquiring developed ranches within <br />wilderness areas - a practice allowed on ordinary national <br />forest lands from which wilderness is created. We wouldn't <br />have made wilderness classification subject to existing pri- <br />vate rights such as mining and grazing. We wouldn't have <br />provided for the continuation of nonconforming uses where <br />they were established - including the use of motor boats in <br />part of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and the use of air- <br />fields in the primitive areas here in Idaho. As these examples <br />clearly demonstrate, it was not the intent of Congress that <br />wilderness be administered in so pure a fashion as to need- <br />lessly restrict its customary public use and enjoyment. <br />Quite the contrary, Congress fully intended that wilderness <br />should be managed to allow its use by a wide speclrum of <br />Americans. <br /> <br />'II <br />!I <br /> <br />".it., <br /> <br />...j~i, <br /> <br />"(. <br />.......: <br />...., <br /> <br />11 <br />