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Wildlife: An American Ideal and Her Values: Continued: #8

Large soil erosion numbers has a morbid affect upon mountain-range-drainage-systems. The Forest Service sells timber on mountain slopes from 10 - 70 degrees all the time. Every day.

Scientific studies prove when habitat and soil washes away on slopes in excess of 10 degrees require over 20,000 years to produce ONE INCH of new top soil. What everyone seems to overlook is that it takes many feet of top soild to support trees and a National Forest. Where is the sanity of all this? Clearcutting needs to be banned all together. Your REMAINING Wilderness Forests need to be declared off limits to all developements if they are to survive for future generations of what this planet was . . . Once Upon A Time.

How does the Forest Service propose to return all the topsoil? This is why the above clearcuts will not see another tree in the next several hundred years, if ever. Can you, as a citizen tolerate a wait that long?

How does the Forest Service hope to not change the rate of snow melt from high altitude solar burn after the entire Forest Canopy is Removed. It can't.

The Forest Service says when fifty percent and more of all this public land is stripped of its habitat that less than 0.2 percent silt increase will occur in water quantity, is moronic! The burning around the Bitterroot Valley that perpetually sits under a constant air inversion layer trapping massive amounts of the pollutants which are produced by the Forest Service is intolerable.

The EIAS states, "Existing air quality conditions will be maintained." To expect us to accept anything the Forest Services says as true insults the intelligence of those who live in the areas.

There are worse greenhouse affects exceeding Denver, Colorado in winter, and they are our mountain valleys. Dust, smoke, and pollution is trapped continuously until a strong wind clears the air. Sometimes it takes weeks. At night, cool air settles what was caused by daytime activities of road dust, smoke, etc. which settles to lower ground levels which causes increased lung diseases and asthma attacks for many innocent citizens.

An informed congress will not tolerate such disobedience and disregard. It's evident the Forest Service and the Department of Agriculture don't intend to inform Congressional Oversight Commitees of these conditions.

Forest Service Draft Environmental Impact Statements are filled with understatements that purposely conceal massive dangers. The Forest Service Environmental writers are a pack of lying, conniving special interest bastards. A special prosecutor into what the Forest Service is doing on our public lands is long overdue. Fiscal irresponsibility in how the Forest Service does financial record keeping in selling our timber is gross malfeasance and needs to be stopped. Each day allows them to get away with timbering and forest crimes.

ECONOMICS SHOW TRUE VALUES ~ Fight Fire With Fire ~

It's obvious, we cannot continue with this vein of answering massive, one-sided Draft Environmental Impact Statements. Therefore, I will show the other side of the coin, called "economics" that Draft Environmental Impact Statements are illiterate about.

As one individual who must also run a company, I cannot afford to take on these social crimes alone. My response to every mistake and political lie that lays between the beginning and the last, is an ever ending story awesome in scope. There are enough mistakes and lies for any court to reject ALL Forest Service 50-year plans permanently.

It will be social stupidity to allow the U.S. Forest Service 50 more years of Forestry Rape and Enviornmental Crimes!

There are enough reasons and truths in my report for the Federal Government to enact Wilderness protections without the need for any compromise. Under the RARE II Congressional Mandate, the Forest Service has already cut ILLEGAL ROADS unchallenged.

Not unlike "Silent Spring," change is possible. A single breath may move a mighty ship as it will a feather. One you can see immediately, the other you cannot. Possibly this report will initiate changes and help to create a new agency that will protect our wilderness lands? Perhaps this single breath in the wilderness can incorporate the grizzly bear and gray wolf so they can live once again in the natural ways of mother nature with all Gods creatures.

PROFIT AND LOSS ISSUES NOT ADDRESSED:

Two of the more progressive Divisions of Wildlife agencies are in the States of New Mexico and Colorado. The States that have the rarest opportunity of being the most naturally involved with mother nature and it's creatures, are mostly Western States. The ties between Federal lands, State owned-lands, Wilderness and Divisions of Wildlife is NOT an interacting relationship. These are agencies always in conflict with each other. A STATE FOREST that is Federal is allowed to be destroyed right before State Game Biologist very eyes. All the wildlife is allowed to be exterminated. Its unbelievable!

There is a chain of command that needs estructured regarding Wilderness areas which are Federally-owned property. As Federal Duck Stamps are necessary to hunt ducks and geese in State controlled areas, a new structured wilderness approach is required now to protect them from the vandal few. The Forest Services needs to be thrown out of our National Forests. A NEW CONSERVATION AGENCY needs to be empowered to protect what remains, forever.

Federal Wilderness lands that are common to Montana or Idaho are the last remaining areas to contain grizzly bears and gray wolves without fences. The recreational money these wilderness areas make for these States and nation are enormous. I will show how efficient wildlife inventories for these States are compared to the outdated ideas the Forest Service has proposed for this Nation.

LICENSE SALE REPORT MONTH ENDING 03

QUANTITY TOTAL-TO-DATE COMMISSIONS

$1,282,908

$14,933,116.70

$252,493.80

NOTE: Figures from the Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks of Montana public record.

The average success ratio per species for each 10 hunters is:

PER 10 HUNTERS ANIMALS HARVESTED:

2.0 ELK 17,647 Elk per 670,309 hunting days
6.8 DEER 137,534 Deer per 1,010,480 hunting days
1.3 BEAR 1,820 Bears per 78,164 hunting days
8.9 MOOSE 554 Moose
6.1 GOAT 215 Mountain Goats
4.7 BIG HORN SHEEP 282 Big Horn Sheep
SPECIES INVESTORS TOTAL # HUNTERS
ELK HUNTERS INVESTING: 86,216 HUNTERS
DEER HUNTERS INVESTING: 200,000 HUNTERS
BEAR HUNTERS INVESTING: 13,062 HUNTERS
MOOSE HUNTERS INVESTING: 619 HUNTERS
MOUNTAIN GOAT HUNTERS INVESTING: 215 HUNTERS
BIG HORN SHEEP HUNTERS INVESTING: 282 HUNTERS

Remember, back in the Preface the Elk Value Figures for 1979?

What values does Wildlife have for the State of Montana and the United States frin one State? What now takes only minutes to read, required years of work to do. Half is spent by hunters in the going and getting there, and half is spent in the doing.

Contrasting the impact of the Forest Service indoctrination and false requirements for invading our remaining forests, the following examples are but a drop in the bucket of what I've been trying to explain.

Since the Draft Environmental Impact Statement by the Department of Agriculture and/or Forest Service implies timber has a national worth superior to anything else in the outdoors, it's this researcher's experience that those Forest Service "assumptions" are wrong, and always have been.

Montana had surprisingly lower success ratios than what I had thought for some species, but higher success percentages in others. The financial impact on the worth of Wildlife to this State or Montana and the Nation is dramatically higher than any other Western States researched.

FOR Montana /Montana 1984 VALUES UPDATED FROM PREFACE, EACH:

WAPITI IS WORTH $8,721.30
BLACK BEAR IS WORTH $9,945.69
DEER IS WORTH $1,094.10

MOOSE IS WORTH $9,021.30
MOUNTAIN GOAT IS WORTH $10,299.90
BIG HORN SHEEP IS WORTH $17,497.45

(NOTE: A BIG HORN SHEEP IS WORTH MORE BECAUSE SOME LICENSES ARE Auctioned OFF at inflated prices. Legally or Illegally? TO WHICH WAS REPORTED, ONE LICENSED HUNTING TRIP BROUGHT $75,000.00. THIS RESEARCHER CANNOT DETERMINE HIDDEN VALUES EXCHANGED ON EXOTIC SPECIES. THE SAME APPLIES TO MOUNTAIN GOATS WHICH STAND IN THE SHADOW OF THE BIG HORN, BUT TO WHICH JUST AS GREAT AN INTEREST IS SUSPECTED BY HUNTERS IN THE BLACK MARKET OF AFFAIRS ALL STATES MUST CONTEND WITH.

[THE MOUNTAIN GOAT IS UNDERVALUED AS OF THIS WRITING]

Montana Citizens REALIZED THE FOLLOWING INCOME WITH THE FOLLOWING SIX SPECIES IN 1984:

WAPITI: $153,904,781.10
BLACK BEAR: 18,101,155.80
DEER: 150,475,949.40
MOOSE: 4,997,800.20
MOUNTAIN GOATS: 2,214,478.50
BIG HORN SHEEP: 4,931,460.90
TOTAL WILDLIFE VALUES: $334,625,625.90 HUNTING 6 SPECIES ONLY.

THE reuse factor of these monies was researched with $ 1,000.00 dollars in ONE DOLLAR BILLS, and $500 Dollars in five dollar bills. Marked with pasted forms on one side to determine name and state of user, the forms were returned for fair exchange, plus postage when the bill left the state of origin.

A check-box for each user, good up to ten checked boxes was provided to determine an average recreational re-use factor. Each check-box had beside it a line for the user's Zip Codes. It was determined the average re-use factor of recreational dollars each state has before it leaves it "permanently is seven times ~ taxing factor!

The amount of taxable exchanges, opportunities for investment, and ease of availability to banks of benefits in "interest earnings" is high because every dollar passed through at least four banks in the process.Montana used it's 1984 hunting dollars for a grand total of $2,342,379,381.30 with only six species.

Outdoor Recreation Business Is BIGGER than anyone has ever imagined.

Approximately 17,000 hunters went on guided hunts in 1984. A survey I held at the Department of Fish, Wildlife, & Parks during the Elk Permit Applications held recently, enabled me to obtain from 50 guides, average fees charged to out-of-state sportsmen averaged $1,300.00

One guide charges $7,800.00, each hunter, and he is booked solid.

Regardless, the higher success ratio that non-resident guests are able to obtain with professional guides has a marked impact on the entire State of Montana or Montana .
Professional guides are responsible for a total of $22,100,000.00 additional business to be spent in the State of Montana, even though the guides themselves don't see it all. The beauty of this arrangement is the immediate "trickle-down" benefits the average Montana Citizen receives when these tourist start buying services from his business neighbors each season. It is HABITAT that makes it all possible. It is HABITAT that makes the very oxygen we breath, and it is HABITAT that supports all the financial values we obtain through Outdoor Recreation.

So what is the Monetary WORTH OF EACH TROUT?

Each trout is worth $42.10 to the People of Montana and all states that have them.

Each fisherman averages 6 fishing trips/expeditions each year.

The licensed fishermen in 1984 fished 1,801,758 times. If each averaged only 2 trout a trip and this is below the national average in active trout states, 3,603,516 trout were caught.

This is COLD WATER FISHING figures only.

Those, who went fishing helped add to the cash flow in the State of Montana by $151,708,023.60. Montana, more.

Almost anyone can understand what the dangers of massive dirt road complexes do to our forests, what the impact of filth and dirt and soil erosion has on our streams. Large amounts of Recreational Dollars are in peril regarding this issue.

WILDERNESS is the most profitable and least damaging answer. It's also wise stewardship.

In the Salmon Forest Plans, ALL PROPOSALS keep open COLSON CREEK from Wilderness Status so that the U.S. Forest Service can have license to destroy it.

The Steelhead and Salmon fishery that is valuable to the area is already suffering from siltation increases. All of the damage is the responsibility of the U.S. Forest Service.

This fishery valuable to the people of the state of Montana and Idaho. Does the Forest Service intend to pay for any damages it does to the future of that fishery which can amount to billions of dollars in lost revenue? The answer is no.

Maybe ONE biologist works in this area for the protection of endangered species. Frankly, none have been known to work here at all. Who speaks for the "original strain of Salmon River Steelhead" and Salmon in this area who are NOT brainwashed to promote timber cutting policies over more important wildlife species? No one, except me.

As time passes, new dirt roads creep yearly into The River of No Return in the Salmon Wilderness Area. The roads must stop.

If Montana doesn't do something drastic, in protecting it's rivers from logging and the roads cut to support it soon, it will lose BILLIONS of dollars in recreational dollars.

There is no challenge more difficult than the one that is required to preserve what remains of the prehistoric times of this continent and what wilderness remains.

I cannot offer any better truths in my lifetime regarding the American Outdoors.

Sincerely,

George E Gehrke
President:
GEHRKE'S GINK

CC: Dept of Agriculture
Montana & Montana FOREST SERVICE LUMBERING TECHNIQUES
PHOTOGRAPHED BETWEEN JUNE & OCTOBER, 1985
Cost to answer Forest Service D.E.I.S. : $8,555.80
Time & Labor: 1100 hours @ $5.00 per hr ' $5500
Flying Time: 21 hours @ $125.00 per hour $2,625.00
Photography Expenses:' 221.55
Field Milage: 330 miles @ .15 cent ea. $49.50
Supplies, Copy Paper Included ' 145.50
Misc. Office Supplies: $ 13.00
Binder: $ 1.25

Sub Total: $8,555.80
Research Man Hours Paid: $55,000.00

George Gehrke/American Sportsman

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