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Mr. Hamburg. The only other thing, Mr. Chairman, I would like 

 to go back to the issue of the marbled murrelet and the statement 

 that Mr. Campbell made about the comparative dearth of science 

 about the murrelet, the lack of really hard information about this 

 threatened specie. 



You yourself have stated that there is a good deal of uncertainty 

 in this area. And I just wondered how you feel that your company 

 can go ahead and continue to log in these sensitive areas given the 

 lack of science and the lack of really clear understanding about 

 what it is going to take to bring this specie back? I ask that in light 

 of the conclusions that were reached in the FEMAT report that the 

 viability rating for the murrelet under the best of conditions are 

 rather low, something around 60 percent even if Federal, State, 

 and private land is protected and if the remaining habitat for the 

 murrelet is protected. 



So why are you confident that Pacific Lumber can continue to log 

 this old-growth and still protect the viability of the murrelet? 



Mr. Campbell. I think we went through this experience with the 

 spotted owl. If you remember, the original claims were that the 

 spotted owl was old-growth dependent and needed an old-growth 

 forest to survive. In fact, the science as it has developed has shown 

 that the birds are thriving and doing very well, nesting, roosting, 

 and foraging in second and third growth managed forests. 



If you look to Dr. Ralph's testimony, in 1991 he said they really 

 don't know how many birds there are. They think there are be- 

 tween 25,000 and 250,000 in Alaska and I would suggest that that 

 is a lack of information about the species. 



In our immediate area, we have all sorts of numbers being 

 thrown out, but somewhere between 70,000 and 90,000 acres of vir- 

 gin redwood timber are set aside now in parks and preserves and 

 national and State forests. I don't believe that the researchers have 

 done adequate work in determining how many murrelets are living 

 in those set-asides and I don't think that harvesting 3,000 acres of 

 Pacific Lumber Company's land is going to lead to the extirpation 

 of the species. 



Mr. Hamburg. So this is based on what you believe, what you 

 feel to be the case, but you don't really have hard scientific evi- 

 dence that would indicate that the FEMAT report is in error or 

 that Dr. Ralph is in error. You just feel that this would be similar 

 to the situation with the northern spotted owl? 



Mr. Campbell. As Mr. Detrich said earlier, we have been work- 

 ing with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and in Owl Creek in 

 particular we set aside 100 acres on that timber harvest plan in 

 mitigation areas designed where there would be no cut designed by 

 the State department of fish and game officials. 



There is disagreement between the State biologist and the Fed- 

 eral biologist as to how the shape of that mitigation should be, 

 whether it should be clumps or whether it should be a block, but 

 we have gone in and done surveys since the harvesting last year 

 and the birds are returning to that area. So it would appear that 

 the mitigations are working. 



As you said, we have financed Dr. Ralph ourselves and the rest 

 of industry, very large sums of money, and what we are finding out 

 is that the critical habitat for the murrelet is actually the ocean. 



