3 
to make it, but its integrity is threatened by two recent developments: the
growth 
of fishing resorts served by hydroplanes, and a jurisdictional dispute as
to 
whether the Minnesota end of the area shall be all National Forest, or partly

State Forest. The whole region is in danger of power impoundments, and this

regrettable cleavage among proponents of wilderness may end in giving power
the 
whip-hand. 
In. the Rocky Mountain states, a score of areas in the National Forests,

varying in size from a hundred thousand to half a million acres, are with-

drawn as wilderness, and closed to roads, hotels, and other inimical uses.
In 
the National Parks the same principal is recognized, but no specific boundaries

are delimited. Collectively, these federal areas are the backbone of the
wilder- 
ness program, but they are not as secure as the paper record might lead one
to 
believe. Local pressures for new tourist roads knock off a chip here and
a 
slab there. There is perennial pressure for extension of roads for forest
fire 
control, and these by slow degrees, become public highways. Idle CCC camps
pre- 
sented a widespread temptation to build new and often needless roads. Lumber

shortages during the war gave the impetus of military necessity to many road

extensions, legitimate and otherwise. At the present moment, ski-tows and
ski- 
hotels are being promoted in many mountain areas, often without regard to
their 
prior designation as wilderness. 
One of the most insidious invasions of wilderness is via predator-control.

It works thus: wolves and lions are cleaned out of a wilderness area in the

interest of big game management. The big game herds (usually deer or elk)
then 
increase to the point of overbrowsing the range. Hunters must then be enoouraged

to harvest the surplus, but modern hunters refuse to operate far from a car,

hence a road must be built to provide access to the surplus game. Again and

again, wilderness areas have been split by this process, but it still continues.

The Rocky Mountain system of wilderness areas covers a wide gamut of forest