and to aim at the types of laws, regulations and practices as will assure adequate protection to recreation and wildlife values on public lands. Many of the fish and game departments in the West are attempting to acquire private lands lying deep within primitive areas for the purpose of protecting wildlife and for the purpose of maintaining the recreation values. Title to much of this land that is presently being acquired in small tracts was acquired under various types of mining claims, some of it under homestead entry. In some instances there is little evidence of legitimate mining operations past or present on many of these areas. In some instances in the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho, the attempts to raise livestock to supplement mining operations proved unprofitable. The total result of the mining and livestock raising efforts was the destruction of a good game range and the ultimate starving out of the miners and settlers, and in many instances these areas were set down in the middle of critical game ranges, and in our attempt to regulate the numbers of game we could not anticipate what might be done by the miner in many instances, and as a result of our inability to know what their operations would be we have not been able to maintain the numbers of game animals on many areas that otherwise might have been possible.

We are wondering if it might not be a mistake to continue to permit the filing of mining claims for the acquisition of surface rights to public lands that have a high potential for recreation and wildlife and a low or questionable value for the purpose of extracting minerals that may be found underground. We might suggest or propose that a system of leasing the mineral rights and a retention of the surface rights for public use might tend to correct the abuse of filing mining claims to acquire surface rights for purposes other than mining. Naturally we are thinking in terms of trying to maintain the optimum conditions for wildlife on the critical winter range areas. It so happens that much of the area of low-grade ores in portions of Idaho are found where the deer and the elk should find suitable wintering habitat. We are merely interested in trying to maintain surface rights so that these animals can do well, not expecting or even thinking in terms of trying to hold up legitimate mining operations. We have no quarrel with the legitimate mine operators in our country so far as I know. We have deer and elk ranging promiscuously over much of the area where the legitimate mining operations are presently going on.

Placer mining as present practiced and permitted by mining laws and regulations tends to destroy for long periods of time all the surface values for recreation and wildlife. There is need for some revision in the laws and regulations that would compel the restitution of the former surface terrain and cover on areas displaced by placer-mining operations. We have lost thousands of acres of good salmon-spawning area, fish-spawning area, and other suitable wildlife areas in Idaho as the result of placer-mining operations. We are suggesting that it would be a good thing if the surface on these areas might be restored at least to a semblance of its former usage.

The pollution of streams and lakes by mining and milling operations has a vital bearing on recreation and wildlife. Proper safeguards must be enforced and must be imposed to cover the disposal of tailings, waste, and fumes in such manner as to render the end products as harmless as possible. The multiple use of the land surface, together with good air and good water for man, beast, and fish, on all our public

land areas in the West is the aim of wildlife managers and administrators. We will work constantly with all groups to achieve this end to the extent that we might maintain the values for recreation and for wildlife in the West on public lands, and so far as practicable and possible on private lands.

We recognize the fact that when it's a question of ducks or babies the ducks are shoved to the background and the babies to the foreground, but we also recognize the fact, gentlemen, that we have a responsibility in trying to point out the fact that we think we can live together and have a maximum amount of wildlife and a maximum amount of development of our natural resources. That's the basis on which our program in Idaho and the other Western States is set up, as far as I am in a position to know from the other wildlife administrators. Thank you, gentlemen, for the opportunity to make this statement.

Congressman WHITE. Now, Mr. Chairman, I have a question or two of vital importance. Am I going to have an opportunity to find out a few things here or how do you want to handle it? I want the witness at the proper time.

Mr. GOLDY. Well, sir, you can claim that privilege if you would bear with us.

Congressman WHITE. Mining has been charged with a lot of things. Mr. Murray, I'd like you to stay for just about three questions. Mr. Murray, could you tell the meeting what the loss in big game was in central Idaho last winter?

Mr. MURRAY. I don't know that I'd be in a position to tell you that, Congressman.

Congressman WHITE. You're the commissioner of game in Idaho? Mr. MURRAY. That's correct, sir.

Congressman WHITE. Have you prepared any

Mr. MURRAY. We had some loss on some of the critical winter ranges in central Idaho, Congressman, as the result of tough weather and short feed.

Congressman WHITE. Short feed; was that short feed occasioned by overgrazing by sheep, sheep running in certain areas where there was nothing for the big game to get at?

Mr. MURRAY. On the principal winter game ranges I would say no. Congressman WHITE. But the winter game ranges were restricted by the pasturing of sheep on the old places where they used to come down to the lower altitudes, nothing for them to come down to now, and a good many thousand of them perished last winter due to short feed?

Mr. MURRAY. There was loss as a result of short feed, Congressman White, but I think you should recognize that much of the critical winter range the animals used to use is presently in farms.

Congressman WHITE. Now, you say the prospectors and miners living in the interior are responsible for the shortage of game? Mr. MURRAY. In many instances, yes, sir.

Congressman WHITE. Just how do they do that? They don't fence it up, do they?

Mr. MURRAY. In our country there has been very little of the area that has actually been fenced, but they have taken into the Middle Fork of the Salmon and other critical areas livestock which has ranged 12 months of the year on what was and is critical range.

Congressman WHITE. Is that horses, or cattle?
Mr. MURRAY. Both, sir.

Congressman WHITE. To a considerable extent?
Mr. MURRAY. To a considerable extent, yes, sir.

Congressman WHITE. You couldn't give the meeting an idea of just how much?

Mr. MURRAY. In some areas it will run from 60 to 100 head. Congressman WHITE. In every case in that interior they had to get permits from the Forest Service or they were in trespass?

Mr. MURRAY. In some instances, yes, sir.

Congressman WHITE. But if they got in there they were subject to Government control?

Mr. MURRAY. Except on their own area, yes, sir.

Congressman WHITE. And their own areas didn't amount to very

much?

Mr. MURRAY. No.

Congressman WHITE. Thank you.

Mr. GOLDY. Thank you, Mr. Murray. I hope some of the gentlemen who departed during that questioning will come back for the next item on our agenda. I'd like to call now on Mr. Mert Folts, who is the representative of the Izaak Walton League of America.

STATEMENT OF MERT FOLTS, IZAAK WALTON LEAGUE OF
AMERICA, EUGENE, OREG.

Mr. FOLTS. Mr. Chairman, members of the Geological Survey and Mining Bureau, Mr. Congressman: I think, Mr. Goldy, that I shall defer the showing of the films until the discussion time, as an illustration of some of the things that have come to pass. My name is Mert Folts; I'am a member of the executive board of the Izaak Walton League of America.

I parked my guns outside; I came here to sit down around a table, as has been illustrated before, with members of various types and walks of life to see what could be done to make such corrections as might be necessary, as found mutually necessary by a group of men with varied interests, to meet the conditions of 1949. I wish I might have time to elucidate upon the need for conservation in America. I am going to make a couple of statements. I wonder how many of you realize that we are destroying land of America at the rate of 500,000 acres per year. I wonder if you are familiar with the statement of Dr. Hugh Bennett, Chief of the United States Soil Conservation Service, that we have 20 years to adjust ourselves to a program of conservation or mutual use of the resources of America for our mutual benefit, or take upon ourselves a lower standard of living. This meeting or conference of people together then assumes great proportions, one that is of a graver nature than we know.

The Izaak Walton League of America is a group of men formed 27 years ago, and our creed is defense of soils, woods, waters, and wildlife, that we might have the blessing that we think that the good Lord intended for us. It was formed in the first place by a group of men altruistically, with no selfish intent, to do what they could to bring about this conservation for which Gifford Pinchot was honored by a forest being named in his behalf in the State of Washington on Saturday, that those plans might be put into use, and might I say

to you we are the only Nation on the face of the earth who today have the answers on how to preserve America and the world for the use of people. We only have one problem, and those of you who have read William Vogt's Road to Survival know that one thing, because of overgrazing or abuse of resources we will someday have too many people for what we have. With all pardon to the religious sects, I do not believe in birth control, yet it is as mandatory upon us as it is to control the birth of deer or game or cattle or anything that affects us as people who are the masters of the earth.

Another thing we believe in is found in the principles of the Soil Conservation Service, and may I say that they have changed radically the uses in vogue in the seventies in these United States in the multiple use of the soil, which my predecessor Mr. Murray so ably gave to you. May I say I concur absolutely in all his remarks and feelings. and sentiments as to the part that we as the Izaak Walton League might play in it. Too many people think of conservation as the withholding from use, when actually it is the wise use for protection, propogation, and renewal of the renewable natural resources.

Now individually I stand here and I say for the importance of whatever I might have to add to this conference, as one of 30,000,000 people who buy licenses to fish and hunt, as one of 30,000,000 people who have become tremendously irked at the abuse of the resources of America, because the brunt falls first on their shoulders, then upon farm populations, then small towns, and finally upon cities and the nations, but the one in the road first is the man at the fisherman or hunter level, because he faces it first, and the first impact, if you please, of abuses are at that level. I said this, that I made the accusation when I said overgrazing or mining abuses, which we are here today to correct; I don't think anyone is here to correct mining use, but it's only the abuses that we are concerned with. May I say that in our own segment of 30,000,000 we too have performed great errors. If you don't think so take a look at Pennsylvania, where we had to shoot 1,000,000 deer because we overgrazed with deer just the same as a cattleman can do his ranch, so the burden is not upon any segment of society; we too are as guilty as any other segment or faction.

We have a membership on the advisory board, whose recommendations you can read, they're out there on the table, and they were brief, and there is a recommendation to separate mineral rights and surface rights. They're right there, the conservation advisory group to the Secretary of the Interior, and we were represented on that board by our executive director.

In finality, the field of game having been well covered, I only want to show we do have a vital interest in this, but as a conservation group; we're interested in the things that Reg Titus said, the things that the cattlemen said, the restoration of these ranges, the restoraion of these forests; the mutual use of these forests and the grazing and the mineral products is to all of our welfare. In conclusion I'd like to pass on a bouquet, because I doubt very much if the Bureau of Land Management will get very many, and in doing so I'd like to quote, because there seems to be a popular misconception of the rights to land. There are two sets of rights, and no less men than Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln have put them down for all history to see. Karl Mickey,

63829-50-ser. 24- -7

the late public-relations man for the International Harvester, published a little booklet called Man and the Soil, a history of the abuse of soils from the time man has known. Karl Mickey worked for a great corporation which was vitally interested in the welfare and sale of their goods, because actually their implements are used in pretty near every vocation in America, but in so doing he gives a great boost to conservation and the Soil Conservation Service. The principles of the Soil Conservation Service, at least in our belief, should be applied to all the lands, but he says there are two sets of rights, and there is no question about it, the public right and the private right, and that they go hand in hand, and I'm going to read one paragraph in regard to these so-called public rights, and it goes like this:

Equal rights to the land do not conflict with private occupation and administration of the land; indeed, it is only by such occupation and administration that equal rights and opportunity can be effected, but the private occupier and administrator holds, in effect, a franchise from society; he owes society an obligation exactly equal to the opportunity his possession of the land represents. To enforce this obligation is the duty of the Government, as the agent of the society; the Government must see to it that the private possessor does not impair the public interest through destructive use of the land. Within those limits the individual in a free society has the right to farm as he sees fit.

And in this instance I will substitute "has the right to take game,' "has the right to mine," "has the right to forest." In other words, there are two sets of rights. Furthermore:

It is also the right and duty of the Government to restrain by force if necessary any willful destruction of the fertility of the soil.

He has a long dissertation on what constitutes freedom, and it's pretty patent and clear. In other words, this is not an ideology; these are the plain facts stated by business people bluntly and straightly, but it is the philosophy that we must cover in our laws of mineral resources, and one other sentence:

It is logical that Government agencies as the trustee of such rights in the land should take the leadership in instituting such measures, whereby we all can mutually live together, mutually prosper.

In closing, I'm going to say that I think the Bureau of Land Management, in providing a meeting place for all of us to sit down peacefully with our guns parked outside, in so doing they have done just exactly what that sentence says-as a trustee of society's rights in the land they have gathered us together to work out mutually for our own benefit such use and regulations of Congress. "Only through freedom and justice can human society adjust itself harmoniously and enduringly to the earth." Certainly that is our goal, to adjust ourselves harmoniously and enduringly to our great Northwest. I hopewe can succeed. Thank you.

Mr. GOLDY. Thank you, Mr. Folts. Is Mr. Clarke here, Don Clarke? Mr. Clarke, I wonder if you'd care to make any comments? We have a few minutes remaining in which I'd like to get any other additional comments from individuals who represent the point of view of recreation and wildlife.