A signed staff article in this month's issue discusses Izaak Walton League v. St. Clair, a recent Wilderness Act decision. The case raises anew the perplexing problem of how to resolve the contradiction between the policy and purposes of the 1964 Wilderness Act and the exemption for mining activities embedded in that Act. Thomas Guilbert finds, despite criticism of the opinion that has been heard from some quarters, that the holding in the case is sound and that the allegedly overbroad and overblown language of the widely-reported dictum stating that mineral rights must give way where wilderness is threatened has much to recommend it.

The most interesting and fully developed point made in the article, however, is an argument never raised in the St. Clair case: that the mining exemption should be strictly construed against because it is in derogation of the international obligations of the United States. Specifically, mining activities would violate the Convention on Nature Protection and Wild Life Preservation in the Western Hemisphere, ELR 40346, which defines "strict wilderness reserves" in such a way that the National Wilderness Preservation System must be included, and then sets strict limitations on what activities the contracting nations may allow in such areas. Thus, the most vexing loophole in the Wilderness Act—the mining exemption—may have been closed off long before its self-included December 31, 1983, termination date, and environmentalists will be able to devote more attention toward getting Congress to add new areas to the Wilderness System, and less toward protecting already included areas against pickaxe and steam shovel.