18 



more cattle on those lands than they ever had before because the 

 cattle are moving out of the riparian areas and using the uplands. 



We can look to Europe and what they have done. Europe has 

 heavy nutrient subsidies on their agricultural lands (Maryland also 

 provides an excellent example of this too). Europeans have put spe- 

 cialty crops in riparian areas such as Cottonwood or other forms of 

 fast growing trees. The nutrients leaching off the lands act as a fer- 

 tilizer subsidy for the trees in the riparian forest, and those are 

 harvested on a regular schedule providing a commodity to the 

 farmers for maintaining those systems. And water quality in the 

 streams and rivers in those areas is extremely good. It is not per- 

 fect, but it is extremely good. There are many things that we can 

 do like that. 



And in the Northwest, if we would open our eyes and look 

 around the world, there are plenty of innovative examples to draw 

 upon and bring to bear on our own problems. 



Mr. GiLCHREST. If I may make one last comment, Mr. Chairman. 

 If you are not familiar, and you may already be, with the Chesa- 

 peake Bay program, which is a regional approach to cleaning up 

 the Chesapeake Bay, we are coming along pretty successfully, and 

 the State of Maryland has a law called the critical areas legislation 

 which protects the land within 1,000 feet of any tributary to the 

 Bay and the Bay itself, and nothing can be developed within 100 

 feet of a tributary or a bay, and there is constant tension there, but 

 it is growing and it is pretty successful. Thank you. 



Mr. Studds. I thank the gentleman. I, at this point, am going to 

 turn the hearing over. Let me just say that my depression has been 

 mitigated by two things. First of all, the fact that the scientists of 

 the Pacific Northwest are clearly also poets and philosophers 

 which always helps and, second, by the extraordinary caliber of the 

 delegation on this committee from that region. If there is any hope 

 at all in terms of the vision and initiative that you folks are seek- 

 ing, it lies in people of the caliber of the three members from your 

 region of the country who sit before you at the moment. They are 

 magnificent, and we are very lucky to have them on the commit- 

 tee. And I now turn to what we up here in our funny talk call the 

 distinguished gentlewoman from Washington to take over. 



Mrs. Unsoeld. [presiding] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I am 

 overwhelmed with frustration because for decades we have failed 

 to use the kind of expertise in adequately developing — your exper- 

 tise in developing management plans — and now I have five minutes 

 to try to extract that all from you. I am concerned having been 

 part of the effort to familiarize the public and my colleagues and 

 the news media with the term ecosystem approach. I am suddenly 

 alarmed that I see the Forest Service creating an ecosystem ap- 

 proach, BLM doing one, somebody else doing another, and very 

 quickly now because there are other things I want to get to, can 

 you give substance to what we mean by an ecosystem approach or 

 perhaps what it isn't so that we have for the record sort of a land- 

 mark? 



Mr. Karr. I will take a shot at that. The fundamentally impor- 

 tant issue is to protect life support systems — the biology which sus- 

 tain human society. Ecosystem is a word that is used in several dif- 

 ferent ways; it is ill defined. I would prefer to use the phrase an 



