13 



Mr. Laverty. We will be happy to provide you with that ration- 

 ale, but none of us here are lawyers. We have done it, and we will 

 be happy to provide you with a thorough assessment. 



Mr. COOLEY. When you do that assessment, I would like you to 

 maybe put inside that assessment, if you might, provide what you 

 think Congress meant at the time in 1975 when this was passed, 

 because the way we interpret it and our people look at this is pret- 

 ty clear. 



Mr. Laverty. I thought it was remarkably clear. It is just that 

 you and I don't agree on that. 



Mr. CoOLEY. No, we do not, obviously. I just think that Congress 

 was pretty specific at the time and wanted to relate the fact that 

 uses would be equally controlled, nothing would be prohibited as 

 far as motorized or floating or anything else, and it looks to me as 

 if the Forest Service has made a decision that they are going to in- 

 terpret this in a way in which they feel makes it a specific use for 

 one particular mode of use of the river. 



I appreciate your response to that as far as your attorneys are 

 concerned as to the original bill. 



Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 



Mr. Hansen. Thank you, Mr. Cooley. There have been some very 

 interesting proposals brought up here. 



One of the things that disturbs me is that I have noticed the 

 amount of use on the Green River reached a peak in '92 and has 

 since gone down rather substantially. 



Is that trend continuing? If that is the case, and it peaked in *92 

 and is going down, is there a need to come up with any new pro- 

 posals, or is this just kind of an insurance policy that you people 

 have come up with? What is the answer to that? 



Mr. Lyons. I will have Bert Kulesza answer that. 



Mr. Kulesza. Mr. Chairman, the use did peak in 1992 at about 

 107,000 visitors for the season. Last year, the use dropped to about 

 97,000 visitors for the season. 



Although it has dropped, all the numbers in the early 90's have 

 been a substantial increase over the use patterns that we experi- 

 enced in the 1980's. Based on those numbers, we felt we needed to 

 respond to what we believed as crowding and increased use in our 

 management plan. 



Mr. Hansen. In your EA, it says on page 259 that there is little 

 evidence that any displacement is going on. Why don't you give us 

 a definition of the term displacement to start with? 



Mr. Kulesza. Well, the definition that I would use for displace- 

 ment is that the current uses on the river, for example, if users 

 were primarily using a segment of the river for recreational rafting 

 or for fishing from a standpoint of having an environment that pos- 

 sessed solitude in their mind and their view, and over a period of 

 time during increases in use, there were more people, that sense 

 of solitude would be diminished. 



Also, as uses change from recreational boating to fishing as we 

 have experienced on the Green, some of those people would tend 

 to go elsewhere for that experience, sensing that the quality experi- 

 ence that they were looking for isn't there any more. 



