73 



Black Hills 



3ighorn 



Size, total acres 



Unsuited/excluded logging acres 



Percent ot total acres 



Wilderness acres 



Percent of total acres 



Percent of unsuited/excluded acres 



Logging 



Suitable acres 



Percent of total acres 



Allowable annual board feet 



Annual board feet per acre 



Recreation 



Trail miles, forest total 



Wilderness visitor days (WVD's) 



WVD's per wilderness acre 



Roads 



Road miles, forest total 



Road miles per square mile 



Road miles per trail mile 



Given the existing degrees of suburbanization, high road densities, intensive 

 timber management, and increasing pressures for all types of multiple use on the 

 Black Hills National Forest, its remaining roadless and isolated areas are in a much 

 more precarious position than are similar areas in less pressured Forests. If natural 

 areas are not set aside as wilderness now, the Black Hills National Forest will soon 

 have no areas of meaningful size remaining in a primitive, natural condition. 



The Sierra Club proposes the addition of five new wilderness areas in the Black 

 Hills National Forest: Pilger Mountain, Breakneck, Black Fox, Stagebarn Canyons 

 and Sand Creek. We also propose extension of the boundaries of the existing Black 

 Elk Wilderness, roughly doubling its present size. Although many of these areas 

 have been damaged in the past, all have returned to an essentially natural condi- 

 tion; if left to natural processes, their few remaining scars would soon heal. This 

 proposal would provide the protection necessary for these areas to regain their 

 primitive State and retain it into the future. 



When contemplating this proposal, it may help to remember the immortal words 

 of the great Sioux spiritual leader, Black Elk: 



I looked ahead and saw the mountains there with rock and forest on them, 

 and from the mountains flashed all colors upward to the heaven. Then I was 

 standing on the highest mountain of them all and round about beneath me was 

 the whole hoop of the world, and while I stood there I saw more than I can tell; 

 I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shape of 

 all things in the spirit and the shape of all shapes as they must live together 

 like one being. 



In the spirit of Black Elk's vision and the 1964 Wilderness Act, the Black Hills' 

 last remaining primitive areas must be preserved. The Sierra Club urges the adop- 

 tion of the South Dakota Wilderness Act in its entirety. 



A. Wilderness Issues 



Wilderness and controversy are no strangers: the law that established the Nation- 

 al Wilderness Preservation System in 1964 took 8 years to pass through Congress. 

 Unfortunately, the basic questions that Congress attempted to settle with that legis- 

 lation are still debated each time a new wilderness proposal is advanced. Far too 

 often, we hear the old mjrths that wilderness designation would halt livestock graz- 

 ing; that untold mineral wealth would be locked up; that recreational access would 

 be stifled; and that water rights would somehow be usurped. 



