476 



Mr. Wright. You know, I cannot responsibly comment whether 

 the Corps is dragging its feet or not dragging its feet. I am sure 

 it is not intentionally dragging its feet. Probably any government 

 agency can move faster than it moves, but from what I have seen 

 of what the Corps is doing, I think they are taking a responsible 

 course of action trying to move forward, particularly on John Day. 

 Senator Hatfield, I understand, is writing more money into appro- 

 priations this year. I do not know that more money is the answer, 

 but we are getting it anyway. 



Mr. DeFazio. Mr. Godard, I have not given you much chance to 

 jump into this. Would you like to comment on some of the discus- 

 sion here? 



Mr. Godard. Thank you. Just to say that my remarks were in- 

 tended to complement what Al is saying, not that we think that the 

 expenditures were wrong or flows are not helpful. We think they 

 probably were. We just want to make sure everyone knows that 

 there is a real price to be paid for those and it is tragic that the 

 fish are not better off" for it. The reason, we think, is the harvest, 

 and I think we need to reform our harvest practices. 



Mr. DeFazio. Well I do not think anyone has been ignoring har- 

 vest and I have obviously been a fairly consistent critic of PFMC 

 for a number of reasons and then we have got the whole issue of 

 the in-stream harvest, which is beyond generally the reach of the 

 Federal Government to some extent, absent some extraordinary 

 measures. But I did invite a representative of the commercial fish- 

 ing industry to come, but they had to cancel at the last moment 

 because they had a brief window of opportunity to go out and catch 

 salmon. [Laughter.] 



No, that is a little wrong. But I feel that there are some legiti- 

 mate concerns that they can express too about the timing of har- 

 vest and who is allowed to harvest and where they are allowed to 

 harvest and how it impacts the ocean fisheries versus river fish- 

 eries versus traditional fisheries, the tribal fisheries and others. It 

 is not quite so simple either. You know, if we just prohibited the 

 taking of fish, given the current situation, it is my belief we still 

 would not see a major reboxind or recovery. It is a contributing fac- 

 tor, but I do not think it is the greatest factor. 



I just cannot resist a comment on this, I relate mostly to forest 

 issues because I spend an awful lot of time on that in my District, 

 and as we moved through the owl debate, we first had the forest 

 plans. And the forest plans included one option which estimated 

 the biological capabiUty of these forests if there were no constraints 

 upon harvest. What could the land grow if the rain just fell and 

 we stuck trees back in there after we harvested them or maybe we 

 even fertilized them, but what is the maximum biological capabil- 

 ity. And there is quite a large number there, 5 billion or so board- 

 feet, and there are still people in the industry who say we want 

 that 5 billion board-feet. But the point is that we have conflicts 

 here between values, and you know, the public would not accept all 

 the public forest being industrial lands and managed as industrial 

 lands. And it would not give us the range of values that we want 

 in terms of the environment on those lands. 



So it is a number that is theoretical, sure, and it is always useful 

 to see the theoretical margins, but it is not a point at which we 



