*(Add Date)*

Dear Mr. Young,

On February 24, 1999, H.R. 829, the Colorado Wilderness Act of 1999, was referred to the Committee on Resources. This bill, sponsored by Rep. DeGette, proposes to designate 1.4 million acres of Wilderness in Colorado's Canyon County. This bill has serious implications of which the Committee should be aware.

This bill is based on a "Citizens' Wilderness Proposal". Almost one-half of the locations contained in the bill are currently managed as Wilderness Study Areas (WSA's) by the BLM. In a 1993 report by the BLM to the President, less than half of these WSA's were even recommended as suitable for Wilderness designation. That means that 24% of all the land recommended for Wilderness designation by this bill has already been found NOT suitable for wilderness designation by the BLM.

Furthermore, these discrepancies between the lengthy and professional wilderness suitability study done by the BLM and the study done by the citizens' group raise serious questions as to the accuracy of the citizens' proposal. The BLM Wilderness Study was subjected to public scrutiny through the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process. Without your help, the Citizens' study will not be subject to any scrutiny. For those reasons, the citizen's proposal relied upon in this bill should be carefully reviewed.

Please use this time that the bill is before your committee to hold hearings and an investigation into the suitability of those areas for Wilderness designation. Thank you for your attention to this matter. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

*(Name)*
*(Address)*