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Mr. HiGGiNS. I believe that these fish provide us a symbol where 

 we can win widespread public cooperation, but if you take decisive 

 action, taking a watershed restoration approach, it will create jobs 

 in the Pacific Northwest for displaced timber workers. The same 

 people who built those roads could put them to bed, but we need 

 ancient forest legislation though that locks up the habitat that pre- 

 serves the owl and the fish. And also we need a stronger Clean 

 Water Act. We just are missing the boat. There is a wholesale abro- 

 gation of the Clean Water Act as it applies to nonpoint source pol- 

 lution on private timberlands, and it has got to be remedied, and I 

 think it has got to come from the top because at the local level 

 things seem to slip through the cracks. 



Mr. Studds. Dr. Karr. 



Mr. Karr. An aside. As long as we implement the Clean Water 

 Act to get the chemical contaminants out of it and leave every- 

 thing else alone, we will not have good quality water resources. In 

 a more general sense, what we really need is a substantive change 

 in the kinds of actions we take and the conceptual framework as a 

 society that is appropriate to the long-term need. We buy new cars. 

 If we don't like our house, we sell it. If we don't like our job, we get 

 a new job. We don't have another place to go and live. That is the 

 only thing that we can't change, and those of us who live in the 

 Pacific Northwest have to focus on the issue that we will live there 

 as a society 50 years from now and 100 years from now. We must 

 change the way we treat not water but the whole landscape; the 

 conceptual framework that we use to plan must be altered. 



Mr. Studds. Thank you very much. The gentleman from Mary- 

 land. 



Mr. GiLCHREST. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to ask just 

 one question with a lot of different answers, but before I ask the 

 question, I want you to know that I support your initiative. Water- 

 shed management and a comprehensive national program is a posi- 

 tive thing to do for future generations, and we should look at this 

 problem the way you have suggested we look at the debt. We want 

 future generations to live in a productive, clean environment. 



Being from the Chesapeake Bay, I recognize this. Only one per- 

 cent of the potential oysters are left. 99 percent of them are gone 

 in the last 100 years. Clams have just about disappeared. The crab 

 harvest is being diminished. When we managed something we call 

 rockfish or striped bass, it came back, but that was a regional ap- 

 proach which was very successful 



You mentioned, I think, Mr. Higgins, or somebody mentioned 

 something about the Clean Water Act and the purpose of the Fed- 

 eral Government creating laws to protect habitat not being ad- 

 hered to by the State of California or by the Forest Service. I must 

 conclude on that that there is a healthy resistance to some of your 

 proposals by a lot of people, maybe agriculture, maybe timber, but 

 there is resistance out there to change to clear-cutting, to a whole 

 host of other things including the spotted owl. 



My question is you made reference to agricultural land being — I 

 don't think you used the term buffer zone, but we use that over 

 here — taken out of production for the protection of protecting the 

 riparian zone for watershed management. You also made reference 



