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JAMES OBERSTAR: Thank you very much. I'm delighted to join Don Fraser and all the many other participants here today on this program to discuss the future of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area as well as its past, how it has been managed and what should we do to best protect and best make that area available for the public.

Several years ago, a traveler to a remote area in the United States in search of an outdoors recreational experience, encountered this sign at the forest edge. Save our environment. Leave this place.

That sign could probably be put up at any one of the entrances to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. That's probably the best way to protect it and to save it, is to keep the people out because of the increasing pressure of use on a very fragile and very sensitive environment and one in which all of us are concerned about. And that's why we're here today.

I think that Don Fraser has done a very fine job of presenting his views. And I want to thank him for the slideshow. I don't have any. And we have a little more modest program here from Iron Range. And--

[LAUGHTER]

So I'll leave that. I just have a little two-picture show here displaying the area and want to join with all of you. Though I think the purpose of this meeting is to attempt to approach the controversy in a reasonable and responsible way, a controversy that has gone on for 75 years and probably longer.

And as we go on through this debate in the public forum and it will continue for quite some time through the hearings that will be held in Washington and possibly even out here in Minnesota and through the many public discussions that'll be held in many forums all throughout the state and in other states.

I think we all would do well to keep in mind an old adage of Speaker Sam Rayburn, speaker of the House longer than any man in history, said, let us disagree. But let us disagree without being disagreeable.

Much of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area debate has been very disagreeable as well as inaccurate. I think it should be the purpose of this program to-- a program that's conducted properly at a center of learning to be both agreeable as well as reasonable and rational and responsible and factual rather than misleading in the public debate.

I think Dr. Searle's very scholarly presentation set the tone for that discussion. But his very scholarly presentation also masks the very deep and bitter emotions that have surrounded the Boundary Waters Canoe Area throughout its history.

I was born and raised in Chisholm, in the heart of the Iron Range. I've traveled throughout that area. I live most of my life in the midst of that controversy. I know how deeply people feel on both sides of that issue.

The condemnation period which we went through in the 1950s, late 1940s, and on into the early '60s, and the very deep and long-lasting feelings among the people of the area that have embittered their attitude toward the rest of the state and the rest of the country, that is one of the facts that we must deal with.

And feelings are deep on both sides of the issues. And I know because I have very close friends. Some of my very best friends are advocates of very opposite viewpoints. The central fact of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area is that it is a wilderness more in name than in fact and in operation.

The interior zone, 618,000 acres laced with portages, canoe routes, paddle routes but also with motor boat and snowmobile areas which have been used for many years. The portal zone also laced with motor and snowmobile routes, paddle zones, and timber harvesting.

The whole area largely logged over beginning even in the 1880s, a long history of dispute as to how that area should be used. It was all brought to a head in 1964 when the Boundary Waters Canoe Area was included in the National Wilderness Preservation Act, along with a total of 9,600,000 acres of wilderness throughout the United States.

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area at that time represented about 10% of the total wilderness in the United States. Since that time, we've added another 8.6 million acres of wilderness to the national wilderness system, a total of about 18 million acres of wilderness, with the Boundary Waters representing about 5.6% of that acreage.

There are 168 other areas scattered throughout the United States, east and west, north and south, under consideration and in various stages of consideration for wilderness, either awaiting enactment by Congress or under review by the land managing agency, whether it's the Forest Service or the National Park Service or the Bureau of Land Management.

In addition, the Carter administration is proposing some 119 million acres in Alaska in various study forms for wilderness consideration. It's not as though we didn't have any wilderness. I'm not arguing that we shouldn't have any more.

What I'm saying is that the Boundary Waters Canoe Area has to be put in its perspective. Just as the argument is made that there are plenty of other areas for people to enjoy snowmobiles and motorboats, there are also plenty of other areas for people to enjoy wilderness. Not that we should reduce this one or that we should give it any less consideration. But the argument cuts both ways.

We've already reviewed the history of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. But the salient fact to me throughout the entire history of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area is that established use has been protected, has been recognized by executive act of the president, by administrative actions of the secretaries of agriculture, and by act of congress, which is now the law of the land.

It was Secretary Jardine in 1926 who dealing with that embryonic piece of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, then 1,000 square miles, roughly 640,000 acres, said in his management plan for the management of that area, a proper harvesting of timber with the preservation of natural screens along lake shores, campgrounds, and similar areas is not inconsistent with preserving opportunities for wilderness recreation.

1936 and 1938, then secretary of agriculture Wilson under President Roosevelt, the other President Roosevelt, reaffirmed that position by restating it and issuing a new management plan that recognized the position of timber harvesting, the use of motor vehicles for traveling, whether snowmobiles-- not snowmobiles, motorboats or limited roads into the area.

Gradually, the use of vehicles over land into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area was eliminated and properly so. The fact is that timber harvesting and motor boat travel throughout the area continued to be recognized as late as 1948, when a further management plan for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area was issued by then Secretary Clinton P. Anderson, which established what is today the two area system or two zone system of the interior zone and the portal zone, interior zone being one of very limited use and the portal zone of more intensive or multiple use.

Again, in 1957, when Hubert Humphrey proposed his first version of the National Wilderness Act, there was a provision that recognized the established use of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, while including it in the national wilderness system, making it a part of the nation's reserve of wilderness lands.

He also recognized the very long standing and very direct relationship of that area to the people who live near it and whose livelihoods depend upon it. The exception that he wrote into the Wilderness Act was not an afterthought, was not something that came up just by accident on the Senate floor. It is one that he very carefully contrived and very carefully crafted as a legislative draftsman in response to questions and issues that have been raised by the people of the area.

He went up to Ely. He went up to Virginia. He traveled throughout that area and held open public meetings to receive the views of the people in the area and how best they feel that area should be managed.

And as a result of that, he determined that there should be certain areas protected. That was a consensus. It was a commitment. It was enacted into law. And it stands as a commitment to the nation and of the congress, to the people of the area, and to the people of the nation as to how that area should be used.

But regardless of acts of presidents, of secretaries of agriculture, of the Congress, or of the courts, the controversy continued. When I was elected in 1974, I decided that that was an issue that wasn't going to go away. It was one that was going to be with us for a long time.

It was probably then the most emotional and difficult issue in my district alongside of reserve mining company. I stated very clearly that reserve mining company should be discharging its tailings on land. And I proceeded to work to my best ability to get that accomplished.

I also felt that the Boundary Waters Canoe Area controversy ought to be resolved and met head on and not just sit back and let events take their course. It's not my way. So I went back. And I read through all the management plans. I read through all the history of use of the area.

And I talked with people who know their business on wilderness, like Bud Heintzelman, know their business on the lawsuits, like Chuck Dayton, and the people in the local area, Ely, and surrounding area, Virginia, the Iron Range, the north shore, simple loggers, miners, people who work in the taconite industry, who seek that area out for recreation, the only rugged, rocky outdoors area that they can go and really relax and enjoy themselves and find out what is it that people want.

Now, those who've been using the area for snowmobiling and motorboats wanted a lot more than they had. And those who were interested in a pure wilderness experience wanted a great deal more than was available.

And rather than just make a pure, simple political decision on-- chop off a piece here and a piece there and give you some and use some, I went and studied it all. And I went and traveled to other areas of the national forest system to see how they're managed, to see what other possibilities there might be for a compromise, a balanced management plan that would recognize all of the legitimate interests and not just one on one side or the other.

And the result of all of this was two-area management plan that pretty well reflects the history and development and the commitment that the federal government has made to the people as to how that area would be managed.

What I attempted to do was to set in wilderness what is truly wilderness, to set aside for multiple recreational use, that area that is best suited for that kind of use. And that area, I would designate as a national recreation area. And the other would be designated as a wilderness.

And I've held open public meetings. I've traveled throughout my district. I've been in other parts of the state to hear other viewpoints. As Bud Heintzelman well knows, my office has been open, available. He's come in to look at all the maps that I've developed.

I think we've had a very open and constructive, cooperative relationship to receive the views of everybody. I want to hear what everyone has to say on it. And I've made some modifications. I've made some changes to try to tighten up certain areas of use, make it a better and more workable plan.

The area designated as wilderness, which is-- I don't remember what the color is over here anymore. So that red area includes 653,000 acres. That includes virtually all of the virgin timber in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. There's a few little scattered plots outside of it. And that will be protected by a management plan.

It will be managed in the tightest fashion of any wilderness area in the United States. My bill, as Mr. Fraser bill, plugs up the exclusion, the loophole, if you will, of the Wilderness Act of 1964, which allows motorboat use in certain areas where that use has been established.

If the exclusion of the Wilderness Act or exemption of that Wilderness Act of 1964, which applies to all wilderness areas, by the way, were not plugged up, then you could have a wilderness area in which there still would be dispute over how it should be used.

So my bill and Don Fraser's bill takes care of that problem. It'd be no aircraft flying over the area. It'd be no logging, no mining, and no commercial activity, 1,200 miles of exclusive paddle routes for paddle canoes throughout the wilderness area.

The National Recreation Area, as Dan said, is a little more complicated than its management. But being complicated has never bothered the US Forest Service. They're pretty capable of managing complicated areas and complicating things themselves sometimes.

But I think that's what it takes to be fair to all the interests. My bill will prohibit mining in the area in a little different fashion than the Fraser bill. Fraser bill takes the approach that the area can be zoned and that there is a court case decided by Judge Neville some two years ago or a year ago that provides for or suggests as a judicial, what do you call it, don obiter dictum, a gratuitous advice by the court that you can zone an area.

Well, his decision was overruled. Yes, it was overruled and went back to the-- went back to the Forest Service to decide as to an administrative basis as to what they want to do, whether they wish to attempt to zone the area or not.

Constitutional lawyers that I've talked to said that doesn't make-- it probably won't stand up. It doesn't make good sense to attempt to zone an area because you may get into complications of legislative taking and the government then required under the due process of law provisions of the Constitution to make payments.

So I have taken language out of a bill that we passed last year called mining in the parks, which sets up a very thorough program of identifying the mineral interests, determining whether they're valid or not, and then determining what to do with them, whether to acquire them or whether to just leave them and prevent their use.

And I think that's a very responsible way to go about it. In any event, both bills will resolve that issue. I don't think that mining is likely in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. Those are lateritic ores, copper, nickel, ores of a very low grade quality. They're sulfide ores which are complicated to process in the refining and smelting phase of copper nickel development.

The International Nickel Company undertook a very extensive sampling of its ores, which lie well without the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and found that they contained 6/10 of 1% of copper nickel ore and decided not to mine. That it gives them 12 pounds of metal from a ton of ore. And they couldn't make it an economical goal.

I don't think that based on geological evidence that I've read and advice from geologists, it just isn't a reasonable proposal to operate in there. But the main thing is to prevent the possibility of it. And that's what my bill will do.

Timber harvesting remains another very controversial issue. There are valid timber sales awaiting execution, if you will, waiting to be carried out within the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, affirmed by a federal court of appeals. And the companies were prepared this winter to go in and do the logging until we sat down and we reasoned together, discussed it.

And I persuaded them to hold off until Congress could have an opportunity to decide this issue. And it's my feeling that we could have action on legislation this year. Now, my bill will eliminate those timber sales, which were the subject of court litigation.

It wasn't an easy thing to propose either. There are 9,000 people in the eighth congressional district whose livelihoods depend on timber harvesting. It's $100 million payroll. A few years ago in Two Harbors when the railroad shut down and laid 800 men off the job, the Economic Development Administration financed a study, a feasibility study for a pulp and tissue mill at Two Harbors.

Surveys done on the area indicated at the time that because of the shortage of supply of wood and availability of wood and difficulty to acquire at a marketable price, that the mill would not be an economic feasibility. And Blandin Paper Company abandoned its plans to go forward. What I'm saying is that the wood supply is very marginal, very thin.

In the 18 major timber-producing counties of the north country as from about Saint Louis County on north to the Canadian border and west on over through Beltrami and Roseau County, we have the greatest concentration of wood supply and of wood processing industries.

Since the last forest survey done by the US Forest Service on federally owned lands and adjacent lands, which was done in 1962, we've had a 17% loss in timber availability in that area, which is already being utilized at or close to its maximum in terms of what is economically available at the mill.

So it's easy to say that this represents only a very small or X percent of the wood supply in Minnesota. But it's like wearing a size 15 shirt if you normally wear size 16. It gets a little tight. And what we want to do is to make additional timber available in the area where it can properly be grown.

The area of the National Recreation Area in which timber harvesting would be permitted under my bill is largely flat lands. It is not interlaced with motorboat-- with water routes. It is not available as the Boundary Waters are for these wide expanses of water.

It's generally second cut area where there is ground cover sufficient to sustain growth on an annual yield basis. In fact, the present Boundary Waters Canoe Area outside of the interior zone contains about 21% of the total softwood availability in all of the federal forest lands in Minnesota.

What I am proposing is that timber harvesting, which I think is in the national interest-- we passed a law last year to establish a whole new program for timber harvesting throughout the United States-- should be conducted here in the interest of the economy of the area and the interest of the national economy and in the interest of the resource itself.

Now the main management tool, if you will, over centuries within the Boundary Waters Canoe Area has been fire. Now, fire does not lend itself to regeneration of the long-lived species like red pine, because the red pine seeds, according to the silver culturalists, won't regenerate in the ash area left after fires. And so what you get are less desirable species from an aesthetic standpoint.

And what is happening within the Boundary Waters Canoe Area is a growing expanse of hardwood, Aspen largely, which grow by roots. They spread the roots out and rhizomes that they pop out of the ground like mushrooms. And that is now becoming a very significant species within that area. Management of some kind is necessary if we're going to produce an aesthetically attractive stand of trees and the kind that is best suited to the land.

The recreational aspects of my proposed national recreation area would leave 1,200 miles of exclusive paddle canoe routes in the wilderness area and additional paddle routes within the national recreation area. It would reduce the snowmobile and motorboat routes now available under the present management system by about 50%

In fact, you'd have just about 40% of the motorboat and snowmobile routes that have been available up until now. And by routing them in certain areas away from those that are the most attractive, like the lake 1, 2, 3, 4 Lake Insula routes, which are very popular travel routes for people in the Ely, Babbitt area.

Folks who live up along the Iron Range love to go up there and make a nice little circle route. I'm going to eliminate that, keep it out, make that an exclusive paddle zone, and make other areas available within the national recreation area.

And to provide additional recreational opportunities, I would add a net of 121,000 acres from what is now the Superior National Forest to the national recreation area, including those lands that would be best suited for recreational opportunity. But the bill in the national recreation area portion has some very important restrictions. Some, again, which I must point out are not very popular to some of my northern constituents.

But again, their interest after looking it over and thinking it over is that we'd rather know where we stand and have an opportunity to use some of this area in the way that we prefer, rather than to see the controversy continue and have it eaten away or to have it all turned over to an exclusive wilderness experience where none of us would be able to use the area for motorized travel.

And that viewpoint is expressed by senior citizens and by handicapped people as well, who also want to use the area for recreational purposes. In the national recreation area, my bill would prohibit the use of aircraft, except on certain lakes which are now within the Superior National Forest.

And they're identified in the bill lakes where aircraft have been landing. But no other area outside of that would be available for aircraft. There'd be no additional summer homes or only 44 included within the provisions of my national recreation area. No additional ones would be constructed.

Forest Service could restrict the use within those areas. No roads would be developed. And no commercial development would be permitted. And the people in the local area say that's fine. We like it that way. We'd rather not have any additional commercial development within the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.

The section of my bill that Don referred to, giving preference to small business operators, is one that is taken from the National Forest Management Act, very largely that in the management of timber sales, preference be given to small business operators.

And the language does not extend beyond that-- within the context of the bill where it appears. And it's very clear that that's what is intended. The Forest Service has to manage other forest lands in the United States that way. They'll do so here as well.

The summary then of this legislative attempt is that-- what we're trying to do is to balance the uses and balance the interests, attempting to recognize that there are those who want to have what you might call a pure wilderness experience. And that is provided right here, that red area here on these green areas.

In the other areas where you see different colors, there are different levels of use, recognizing the different characteristics of the land and the different history of use in those areas so that we don't take away from people what they have had and what has been committed to them for many years.

To recognize that there is a national interest in wilderness, that there is a national interest in wood fiber supply, that there is a national interest in multirecreational use. 40% of the people from outside the state who use the Boundary Waters Canoe Area use motorized travel, whether motor canoe, or motor boat, or snowmobile.

That in the winter time, months of December through first part of march, that up to 90% of the use of that area is by snowmobilers, very little by others. People will not be disturbed by motors in that area.

And attempt to resolve the conflict by establishing areas where people can pursue their uses and their interests without disturbing others. I guess that is my view of where we ought to go and how we ought to manage resources in general.

I don't think there's anything in life that's all one way or the other. Each of us has had to make some compromises somewhere along the line in everything that we've done. What we're trying to do is to make one that's a compromise in the public interest. Thank you very much.

[APPLAUSE]