300 



Springs Tribe, who remembers as a boy when the Corps of Engi- 

 neers was approaching the tribes with proposals to construct Bon- 

 neville Dam. And the Corps of Engineers promised that there 

 would be fisheries mitigation, there would be hatcheries upstream 

 above the tribes' fishing places to mitigate for the impact of Bonne- 

 ville Dam. 



Instead what happened was the Mitchell Act which was enacted 

 simultaneously basically with the Bonneville project, with the au- 

 thorization for Bonneville Dam, brought about the construction of 

 a number of hatcheries and most of those hatcheries in the Colum- 

 bia basin have been below Bonneville Dam. That has effectively 

 seen as a shift of the fisheries resources fi*om upstream areas to 

 downstream areas in the Columbia basin, and that presents a 

 number of inequities to the tribes. 



In a broad context, we are trying to work with those kinds of eq- 

 uitable considerations and restoring fish to the up-river areas 

 where the tribes historically fish. We have a number of proposals 

 that we are moving forward with to try and reform hatchery man- 

 agement practices so that the hatcheries can be used to put fish 

 back in the rivers to rebuild the nms at aU the tribes' usual and 

 accustomed fishing stations, and those usual and accustomed fish- 

 ing stations are spread throughout the tributaries. We believe that 

 hatcheries can be used as a tool to restore natural spawning popu- 

 lations of salmon, but that will mean changes in the hatchery man- 

 agement programs and that means a changed way of doing busi- 

 ness — changes in fimding, changes in personnel, changes in man- 

 agement practices. And those we are encouraging to come about as 

 quickly as possible. 



Mr. DeFazio. Thank you. 



Mr. Smith, on the Section 7 consultation, I think you in passing 

 in your testimony mentioned something about involvement by the 

 tribes and the public in Section 7 and striving to make that a bit 

 more inclusive. Could you expand on that? I have got to say I have 

 problems with the process. 



Now here is the bottom line. In resolving any of these natural 

 resource conflicts to anybod/s satisfaction, there is going to have 

 to be a very open and public process. Otherwise, people are going 

 to suggest there was a hidden agenda, a deal was cut, it was politi- 

 cal, whatever. You know, I am very critical of the way the Presi- 

 dent has attempted to resolve the forest crisis in the western re- 

 gions of Oregon, Washington, northern California because I do not 

 think it is going to work. That is a completely secret process by a 

 group of scientists and the biggest problem they are having is they 

 do not have any credibility with anybody, the environmentalists or 

 the industry, because it was secret and everyone questions how 

 they got to where they got. In fact, I was the first person to raise 

 those concerns on the day it was released and now I have been 

 joined by the most radical environmental groups and the most 

 hard-line industry groups and basically all of us are suing to get 

 that information because everyone wants to know how did you get 

 there. 



Could you comment on how you are going to improve Section 7 

 so that we do not have that problem? 



