EXPLANATION

It apparently is not the intent of the Committee to change the current law governing the funding for management and development for the revested “Oregon and California Railroad Grant" lands and the "Coos Bay Wagon Road" lands. The existing procedure of making 50% of receipts available for management and development has enabled BLM administrators to develop long range management programs. In order to permit this practice to continue, it is suggested that section 306 (c) make clear that any "O&C" lands, or private lands acquired in exchange for "O&C" lands, which later become administered by the Secretary of Agriculture, shall continue to be subject to the same requirements concerning the distribution of revenues.

11. Section 310.-On page 20, lines 10-21, special provisions should be made in either section 310 or the report language accompanying section 310 for those cases involving innocent or unintentional timber trespass. The Secretary should be given the authority to settle this type of trespass either by requiring the trespasser to pay fair market value for trees cut on National resource lands or by accepting in exchange trees or logs of like value. Because of intermingled private and Federal lands, coupled wtih poor boundary markings, unintentional trespass can easily occur. Adjacent private land owners may trespass on Government lands while timber sale contractors operating on National resource lands may trespass on private lands. Authority for administrative treatment of such situations should be provided for.

12. Section 401(b).—Page 22, line 17, delete the word "and." At line 20, insert the following: "and (6) lands within the National Forest System under which rights-of-way may be granted pursuant to the act of October 13, 1964, Public Law 88-657, 78 Stat. 1089-1090, 16 U.S.C. 532-538."

EXPLANATION

Authority establishing a system for granting right-of-way over national forest lands was developed in 1964. This program should continue and not be alternated by H.R. 5441. Under authority provided in the 1964 Act, the Forest Service and owners of intermingled private land have constructed and jointly on a road system representing more than $100 million investment. The system is being added to at the rate of about $10 million a year. This program benefiting both the Federal government and private land owners should be continued and should not be the subject of right-of-way authority contained in H.R. 5441. 13. Section 401(d).-On page 27, lines 8 through 13, delete the sentence: "The issuance or revision of such regulations shall be applicable to every rightof-way granted, issued, or renewed pursuant to this title, irrespective of whether that right-of-way was granted, issued, or renewed prior to the issuance or revision of such regulations."

EXPLANATION

In situations where there are intermingled private and Federal timber lands, access rights are typically granted by each party to assure long-term access for timber management, protection and harvest. In these cases it would be inappropriate to subject rights-of-way across the Federal portion of these intermingled lands to the uncertainties of in futuro regulations. This is also undesirable in instances where only Federal right-of-way grants (as opposed to reciprocal grants) are involved, since long-term planning for access is essential to proper timber management.

14. Section 406.-On page 29, lines 20 and 21, delete the phrase "two-year period, shall be presumed to constitute abandonment of the right-of-way," and insert the following: "five-year period, shall constitute a rebuttable presumption of abandonment of the right-of-way."

EXPLANATION

We believe that determination of abandonment of a right-of-way based on a five-year period of non-use rather than two years is more appropriate. This would give the holder of the right-of-way a more reasonable time period within

which to reconsider his need. This is especially true in some forest management situations. It is possible that a timber management area on National resource lands call for å ten or twenty-year entry could have an access road that is not used for a two-year period but will be used in the future.

NATIONAL FORESTS-ROADS AND TRAILS

PUBLIC LAW 88-657; 78 STAT. 1089

(S. 1147]

AN ACT to enable the Secretary of Agriculture to construct and maintain an adequate system of roads and trails for the national forests, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That:

The Congress hereby finds and declares that the construction and maintenance of an adequate system of roads and trails within and near the national forests and other lands administered by the Forest Service is essential if increasing demands for timber, recreation, and other uses of such lands are to be met; that the existence of such a system would have the effect, among other things, of increasing the value of timber and other resources tributary to such roads; and that such a system is essential to enable the Secretary of Agriculture (hereinafter called the Secretary) to provide for intensive use, protection, development, and management of these lands under principles of multiple use and sustained yield of products and services.

SEC. 2. The Secretary is authorized, under such regulations as he may prescribe, subject to the provisions of this Act, to grant permanent or temporary easements for specified periods or otherwise for road rights-of-way (1) over national forest lands and other lands administered by the Forest Service, and (2) over any other related lands with respect to which the Department of Agriculture has rights under the terms of the grant to it.

SEC. 3. An easement granted under this Act may be terminated by consent of the owner of the easement, by condemnation, or after a five-year period of nonuse the Secretary may, if he finds the owner has abandoned the easement, make a determination to cancel it. Before the Secretary may cancel an easement for nonuse the owner of such easement must be notified of the determination to cancel and be given, upon his request made within sixty days after receipt of the notice, a hearing in accordance with such rules and regulations as may be issued by the Secretary.

SEC. 4. The Secretary is authorized to provide for the acquisition, construction, and maintenance of forest development roads within and near the national forests and other lands administered by the Forest Service in locations and according to specifications which will permit maximum economy in harvesting timber from such lands tributary to such roads and at the same time meet the requirements for protection, development, and management thereof, and for utilization of the other resources thereof. Financing of such roads may be accomplished (1) by the Secretary utilizing appropriated funds, (2) by requirements on purchasers of national forest timber and other products, including provisions for amortization of road costs in contracts, (3) by cooperative financing with other public agencies and with private agencies or persons, or (4) by a combination of these methods: Provided, That where roads of a higher standard than that needed in the harvesting and removal of the timber and other products covered by the particular sale are to be constructed, the purchaser of the national forest timber and other products shall not be required to bear that part of the costs necessary to meet such higher standard, and the Secretary is authorized to make such arrangements to this end as may be appropriate.

SEC. 5. Copies of all instruments affecting permanent interests in land executed pursuant to this Act shall be recorded in each county where the lands are located. Copies of all instruments affecting interests in lands reserved from the public domain shall be furnished to the Secretary of the Interior.

SEC. 6. The Secretary may require the user or users of a road under the control of the Forest Service, including purchasers of Government timber and

other products, to maintain such roads in a satisfactory condition commensurate with the particular use requirements of each. Such maintenance to be borne by each user shall be proportionate to total use. The Secretary may also require the user or users of such a road to reconstruct the same when such reconstruction is determined to be necessary to accommodate such use. If such maintenance or reconstruction cannot be so provided or if the Secretary determines that maintenance or reconstruction by a user would not be practical, then the Secretary may require that sufficient funds be deposited by the user to provide his portion of such total maintenance or reconstruction. Deposits made to cover the maintenance or reconstruction of roads are hereby made available until expended to cover the cost to the United States of accomplishing the purposes for which deposited: Provided, That deposits received for work on adjacent and overlapping areas may be combined when it is the most practicable and efficient manner of performing the work, and cost thereof may be determined by estimates: And Provided further, That unexpended balances upon accomplishment of the purpose for which deposited shall be transferred to miscellaneous receipts or refunded.

SEC. 7. Whenever the agreement under which the United States has obtained for the use of, or in connection with, the national forests and other lands administered by the Forest Service a right-of-way or easement for a road or an existing road or the right to use an existing road provides for delayed payments to the Government's grantor, any fees or other collections received by the Secretary for the use of the road may be placed in a fund to be available for making payments to the grantor.

Approved October 13, 1964.

Mr. MELCHER. Well, Mr. Hall, we are going to welcome your participation with us on this as we draft this legislation. We are going to find, I think, in many areas that we must address jointly all of the Federal lands. There is no use getting a good grazing deal worked out, as you heard us discuss this morning earlier, if we are just going to limit it to a portion of the public lands.

Mr. HALL. Excuse me, I should have been more specific, the recommended amendment would be to exempt lands within the national forest system under which rights-of-way may be granted pursuant to the act of 1964, limited to that easement granting authority. Mr. MELCHER. I see. Other rights-of-way

Mr. HALL. Other rights-of-way and other areas would not suggest that.

Mr. MELCHER. I see. That makes it clearer then because, perhaps you can advise me, almost any right-of-way other than the access roads you are speaking of, almost any right-of-way across forest, does involve the Secretary of the Interior.

Mr. HALL. Even these involve the Secretary of the Interior. There is an internal bookkeeping process whereby the Forest Service, the Secretary of Agriculture, advises the Secretary of the Interior. Mr. MELCHER. They coordinate it.

Mr. HALL. Right.

Mr. MELCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Hall. I find your testimony encouraging because it hits a spot which has been bothering us and your giving us some guidance is very welcome. It seems already that after 10 years of test and trial, evidently it has had some success in laying out access roads in the national forest and maybe this will be helpful to us as it affects BLM.

Mr. HALL. Thank you.

Mr. MELCHER. Mr. Lloyd Tupling and Mr. Charles Clausen.

STATEMENT OF W. LLOYD TUPLING, WASHINGTON REPRESENTATIVE OF THE SIERRA CLUB

Mr. TUPLING. I am Lloyd Tupling, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Clausen, in the interest of saving time, he will not appear this morning.

Mr. MELCHER. All right, thank you.

Mr. TUPLING. I would like to highlight our comments on the proposed organic authority for the Bureau of Land Management and ask that our full statement be included in the record.

Mr. MELCHER. Lloyd, your entire statement will be included in the record at this point as if read, and you may proceed as you see fit. Mr. TUPLING. Thank you.

Since expiration of the Classification and Multiple-Use Act in 1970, the Bureau of Land Management has been without basic guidance from Congress on long-range objectives for the public domain. The time has long since passed for administering our public lands under a patchwork of ancient disposal laws and piecemeal reform acts. The Sierra Club is gratified by the attention the committee is giving to overdue revision of statutes.

Legislation which emerges as a result of these hearings should reflect several basic concepts. The new organic act should recognize that the remaining public domain represents an irreplaceable national asset that should be retained in Federal ownership, rather than be subject to extensive disposal. Since administration of public land is the constitutional prerogative of the Congress, the new act should provide BLM with congressional guidelines for long-range management policies, including directives based on tenets of the National Environmental Policy Act and the Multiple-Use and Sustained Yield

Act.

The new Organic Act must repeal obsolete disposal laws; but should not replace these with discretionary authority for administering officials to open new avenues for disposal, except on a limited basis. Congress must retain its basic constitutional authority over public land disposition. The new act should give BLM the means for implementing land acquisitions and for exchanges serving the public interest. The new act should make BLM lands eligible for classification under the National Wilderness System Act. The new act should give fish, wildlife, recreation, and esthetics full consideration with other values in use of public lands.

Many of these objectives are dealt with constructively in H.R. 5441, the National Resource Lands Management Act which is pending before your committee. Because H.R. 5441 might serve as the framework upon which the committee decides to build the BLM Organic Act, the Sierra Club would like to offer some specific comments for clarification of its provisions.

In the definitions in section 3 of H.R. 5441 there is a change in the existing statutory definition of sustained yield which revises considerably the meaning of the term. On page 3, line 10 we suggest the deletion of the word "permanent." The line should read "without impairment of the productivity of the land."

We also are concerned, Mr. Chairman, by the thrust of Section 104-Disposal Criteria and some provisions in title II for sale au

thority, because they appear to give undue emphasis to sale of public lands. In section 104(a) (1) a tract may be transferred out of Federal ownership if it is isolated land. The so-called isolated land is placed in a special category for disposal; yet there is no definition of isolation as it relates to other lands. Isolation in itself should not be a criteria for disposal. It is entirely possible that the so-called isolated tract might be the only means of public access to a river, stream, or other recreation area.

Likewise, the intent of language in section 104 (a) (3) also is unclear. It calls for possible sale of a tract which "will serve important public objectives which cannot be achieved prudently or feasibly on land other than national resource lands and which outweigh other public objectives and values, including recreation and scenic values, which would be served by maintaining such tract in Federal ownership."

I submit, Mr. Chairman, that there is something wrong in a process of logic which infers that non-Federal ownership will better attain "public purposes" than Federal ownership will. Moreover, the subjective judgments left up to the discretion of the Secretary are open ended. What are the objectives which cannot be achieved prudently and feasibly on the land under Federal ownership? Do we want to open the way for the Secretary to permanently dispose of such assets? This particular section is an invitation to disposal because every land claimant will assert that his desire coincides with "important public objectives" and that no other land is feasible for him to acquire.

Since the Congress has ultimate jurisdiction over the disposal of public lands, some restraint is necessary over the discretionary authority of the Secretary. In other legislation, it has been suggested that Congress be required to grant its approval to disposal decisions affecting areas of 20,000 acres or more and that the House and Senate Interior and Insular Affairs Committees be given veto power over actions on areas of 5,000 acres or less. We do not have a specific acreage limitation to recommend nor precise implementation procedures by Congress, but we do recommend restrictions on Secretarial discretionary authority.

Following the same line of thinking regarding the divestiture of Federal lands, we strongly support sections 503, 504, and 505 that repeal the many antiquated disposal laws.

Mr. Chairman, we also feel strongly that it is essential that the BLM be granted enforcement authority which minimally allows full enforcement of BLM and Department of Interior regulations. Without such authority land planning and management will be useless exercise.

A provision that has been included in some BLM Organic Act bills that were introduced in earlier Congresses was to require the "advise and consent" of the Senate of the President's nominee for Director of the BLM. We feel this is an important check on the executive branch of Government that helps insure the proper implementation of congressional policies and the selection of qualified candidates.

Returning to existing provisions of H.R. 5441, we wish to question section 206 which gives guidelines for the conveyance of minerals and (2) when reservation of mineral rights is interfering with min