28 



In those two areas, in educating the public and in negotiating 

 with the beneficiaries of introduced species, I think probably that 

 is better handled — it is easier to make your case if you do that 

 across the board. Since CEQ has been abolished, I am not sure 

 which agency should take the lead on it. It is not obvious anymore. 

 If they still existed, I would say they should do it. I guess that 

 bucks the job to the Office of Environmental Policy at the White 

 House, and I would hope they would pick it up. 



Senator Akaka. Any other views? Mr. Singletary, you mentioned 

 in your testimony that there should be a revision of Federal nox- 

 ious weeds laws, and that would likely entail tinkering with the 

 present laws. 



Mr. Singletary. Yes, sir. I often preach to the people that work 

 with us: Do you know how you make progress? And my classic re- 

 sponse in my lecture is: One step at a time. And I look at the issue 

 that we face holistically here today in that there are only a limited 

 amount of resources ultimately that can probably be put to this. 

 And creating a super-agency and that kind of thing and trying to 

 pull all of these things together, number one, I am afraid from a 

 cost perspective that that might be prohibitive. And when you get 

 so deeply engrossed in agency policies and politics about shifting 

 and that kind of thing, there are natural roadblocks that even Con- 

 gress would face in terms of doing that kind of thing. That is why 

 I favor a more coordinated approach and a tighter control over the 

 coordination function as it relates to that. 



Again, I will go back to the OTA report and say that that is an 

 excellent blueprint. It makes a number of — it lays out a number of 

 specific policy options that would accommodate it in the kind of ap- 

 proach that I have espoused to you, sir. 



Senator Akaka. Any other views to express on comprehensive 

 policy or tinkering with the laws? 



Mr. SCHMITZ. Yes, I have a comment. 



Senator Akaka. Mr. Schmitz? 



Mr. Schmitz, I think the States need to take more responsibility. 

 Florida has taken responsibility. We are in the process of evaluat- 

 ing and we are going to make recommendations to our legislature 

 on a comprehensive program to become established that will man- 

 age research and control invasive alien plant and animal species in 

 public lands. But the most important thing that we really need is 

 Federal money. The Federal Government played a role in helping 

 to spread a lot of the exotics that presently plague Florida's envi- 

 ronment, and it would be nice if at least we could get matching 

 funds freed up or something like that, where the State puts up 50 

 percent and the Federal Government puts up 50 percent, at least 

 in terms of finding long-term solutions such as bio-control research. 



We have a hodgepodge of agencies from Federal, State, and coun- 

 ty right now that are funding bio-control research for melaleuca, 

 and if any one of those agencies pulls their fiinds out, it threatens 

 the entire program. Many times in the course of the last several 

 years we have come close to losing bio-control research. The USDA 

 just wanted to fold up and leave, essentially because they were just 

 tired of trjdng to get money out of the various Government agen- 

 cies. 



