316 



half timber salvage in the forests of Idaho ravaged by 

 forest fires . The experts from the Forest Service have 

 testified before this Congress as to the desperate need for 

 salvage operations to remove burned and damaged trees . * 

 Obstructionist activities such as lawsuits have delayed such 

 salvage operations to the point at which they may not be 

 successful in saving valuable board feet or saving the 

 forests from even more devastating forest fires this sunimer. 



In Chapter 2, the section on "Human Uses and Values", the 

 drafters ignore a critical economic iit^jact factor. They 

 analize the number of jobs associated with Forest Service 

 and BLM managed lands, but they do not consider the dollar 

 impact which strikes surrounding communities when income 

 from the natural resource industries decreases. Dr. Neil 

 Remby and Dr. Chad Gibson could have provided information to 

 the drafters which would show that for every dollar of 

 income which is lost because of reduced grazing, there is at 

 least a five times higher impact in the surrounding 

 communities. This adverse economic impact of reduced 

 resource income is not considered in the draft. 



CONCLUSION: ALONG WITH ALL OTHER FLAWS, THE ECOSYSTEM EIS 

 ENDANGERS PRIVATE PROPERTY. 



You have been assured by project personnel and members of 

 the Coalition of Counties that the ecosystem projects will 

 have no impact on private property. That assurance is as 

 flawed as is the content of the eis as to grazing lands. 



In Owyhee County, and in all the rangeland counties of 

 Idaho, the land resembles a checkerboard when one colors in 

 the mixture of private lands, federally managed lands, and 

 state lands. In most of our county it is physically 

 impossible to impact federally managed land without 

 impacting the private land which is adjacent and intermixed. 

 It is fact that a failure to clear away the fuel of dying 

 trees on federal Forest lands increases the fire danger; and 

 the fire does not stop at the boundary of adjacent private 

 property. It is fact that a reduction of grazing on 

 federally managed lands in an allotment to the degree that 

 it becomes economically impossible to graze the allotment 

 decreases the value of the private property which is the 

 base property of the ranch. It is fact that habitat 

 restrictions for purposes of protecting a species on 

 federally managed lands cross boundaries and are applicable 

 to private land. If there was doubt before the Sweethome 

 decision, there is none now. ; 



The project leaders of the ecosystem teams are not novices 

 in leuid use. They know that you cannot iit^jact the public 

 lands in Idaho without iit^acting private property which 



