79 



I think the information that was presented both yesterday and 

 today by Mr. Leonard and Dr. Ralph is relevant. While it was 

 somewhat belittled by earlier testimony, it is a significant fact that 

 yesterday the appraisal that came from the U.S. Forest Service for 

 the entire 44,000 acres, indicated that a price tag for that property, 

 which many of us believe would be conservative, and while I am 

 not an appraiser I have talked to many people who have knowledge 

 in the industry and they think that the $1.5 billion price tag for 

 44,000 acres is probably conservative. 



The fact that Dr. Ralph indicated 1,000 marbled murrelets prob- 

 ably exist on that proposed 44,000 acres does in fact work out to 

 about $1.5 million per bird and whether you think that is not a sig- 

 nificant amount of money, there are many people in the United 

 States, particularly elected officials, that are charged with the re- 

 sponsibility of providing habitat for human beings, both young in 

 age and disabled throughout this country that think that were the 

 Federal Grovernment to provide us those kinds of revenues to meet 

 those kinds of programmatic needs that would be a significant con- 

 tribution to us. 



So in summarizing and wrapping this up, Mr. Chairman, I think 

 the significant question is how much acreage is imperative to be 

 set aside in this proposal and how much does the total cost for that 

 taking have a bearing on this whole process. We hope that you will 

 consider Mr. Farr's contention this morning that reasonable people 

 can sit down and negotiate and come up with reasonable solutions 

 and I hope that in this case a reasonable solution will be the 4,500- 

 acre proposal. 



Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 



[The prepared statement of Mr. Dixon appears at the conclusion 

 of the hearing.] 



Mr. Rose. I appreciate your testimony and you all being here. So 

 you would welcome an opportunity then if the Department of Agri- 

 culture, say Mr. Lyons, we have talked about the Assistant Sec- 

 retary for Natural Resources and Environment, and some of us on 

 the subcommittee were and maybe some others, we just sit down 

 and begin the process of talking about that. 



Mr. Campbell. 



Mr. Campbell. Mr. Chairman, we would ask the subcommittee 

 to reject the 44,000-acre proposal, but to certainly consider the ac- 

 quisition of the 4,500 acres and we would be delighted to sit down 

 with the administration gind the subcommittee and the Congress 

 and work out some sort of satisfactory resolution. 



Mr. Rose. Well, of course, the subcommittee is going to have to 

 caucus on both sides of the aisle to decide what we do, but we hear 

 you and I hope we can proceed rather swiftly. 



Mr. Hamburg. 



Mr. Hamburg. I wanted to just follow up on something that John 

 Campbell said. Given what you called, Mr. Campbell, a tremendous 

 regulatory package that is currently in place. Isn't it true that even 

 with that tremendous regulatory package in place, that even within 

 this 4,500-acre block that we are all in agreement that it might be 

 better if that passed from private to public ownership? 



