I must take issue with Barbara Lilley' s letter in the Nov.-Dec. Sage, urging support of the position taken by Abe Siemens in his letter published in the Nov. '75 Southern Sierran.
Personally, from a purely selfish point of view, I'd love to have jurisdiction over all of my favorite wild areas, so I could limit their use to levels I consider acceptable. Since this is not possible, I think it is important to have high levels of informed users in the wilderness.
One of the best arguments for establishing new wilderness and to prevent development of de facto wilderness is to point to overuse and crowding in current areas. Conversely, while underused areas are great to visit, they support ORV users and timber industry public relations men in their claim that wilderness classification "locks up" land for the benefit of "a few hardy individuals."
Granted, the BMTC could and should stress to a greater extent the letter writing, camp cleaning, and trail maintaining responsibilities of all backcountry users. However, the result of abolishing it would either be to leave future users uninformed, with a greater impact on the land; or to leave users' numbers smaller, with wilderness being short-changed in land use management as a result.