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BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY 



Senator Bumpers 

 Senator Pressler 

 Page 2 



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the mistaken impression that mining is a multiple use. It is not. Under the 

 Mining Law of 1872 mining is a "super use," taking precedent over all multiple 

 uses. 



Senator Bumpers has been working tirelessly to put mining under the multiple 

 use framework through reform of the 1872 Mining Act. If Senator Pressler is 

 truely concerned about seeing mining become part of multiple use management of 

 our public lands, then he will support Senator Bumper's reform proposals. 



Also, Senator Pressler will find that wilderness is included as a multiple 

 use in the Multiple Use-Sustained Yield Act. As the Forest Service's Stan Silva 

 testified, the maximum amount of public timber affected by the Black Hills 

 wilderness proposals is five percent. That's not much when compared with the 

 opportunity to attract a whole new type of tourist to South Dakota with little 

 or no capital investment on our part. 



Fourth, since Senator Pressler tried to lay the blame for the timber 

 industry's problems on unnamed "extremist environmentalists", we must assess 

 who is really at fault. The Forest Service admits its 1983 Black Hills management 

 plan overestimated by 20 percent the amount of timber available for cutting. 

 As a result of that overestimate and Reagan-era mismanagement of timber resources, 

 a multi-national company. Pope and Talbot, invaded the Black Hills timber market. 

 The company built large, new sawmills in the region. Before any "environmental 

 extremist" filed the first "frivolous appeal" on Black Hills timber sales, Pope 

 and Talbot had driven several small mills to bankruptcy. 



But that was not all. Pope and Talbot brought in many of its own out-of- 

 state people to cut the trees. Pope and Talbot refused to hire native South 

 Dakota loggers. Since then. Pope and Talbot has mechanized its logging 

 operations, further reducing its work force. If it was the intent of "extremist 

 environmentalists" to put loggers out of business it could only hope to be as 

 successful as Pope and Talbot. 



But even that's not all. In order to accomodate Pope and Talbots' ability 

 to cut more trees and to decrease its costs to process timber sales, the Forest 

 Service increased the size of timber sales and upgraded road specfications for 

 timber sales. The result was further erosion of the ability of small business 

 to bid on timber sales. 



Fifth, the overwhelming problems with the timber industry in the Rocky 

 Mountain region did not arise until the Reagan-Bush era, when the economic well- 

 being of the multi-national timber industry, rather than the environmental well- 

 being of a productive forest, became the basis upon which forest policy was 

 determined. Forest personnel, such as John Mumma, who supported adherence to 

 scientific multiple use, sustained yield concepts, rather than the dictates of 

 multi-national logging concerns, found themselves drummed out of federal service. 



