47 



managers? So whatever we come up with is goinS ^ ^^^ ^^ "^~ 

 Yolve those Fedoal, ^Ate and tribal entities in cooperative man- 

 agemoit of the fishcaries. 



That is what we do now in harvest management. I think we need 

 to move that apiuroach into river management. Now the specifics of 

 exactfy what institiitioa we have-^ dont have any magic soluticm. 



Ms. U>rsOElJ>. Who wants to jump into that one next? 



Mr. TlEXSON. Let me take a stab at something aimray. To a cer- 

 tain extent these same problems used to {day mt Columbia River 

 and the area of harvest management untU the C«dumbia River fish 

 managemoit idan was negotiated over a period of time and basi- 

 cally enacted into law through the process of cocisent de c ree. 



And that consent decree created what in effect was a new institu- 

 tion and there are subcommittees, technical committees, productiotn 

 committees and then there is a policy cwnmittee and in that policy 

 committee said representatives of all the State, Federal and tribal 

 agencies. 



Most of the same agencies, if not all of them, also are a part of 

 COBFWA, the Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Authority. You 

 have right now a lawsuit that has effectively been transmitted into 

 the kind of lawsuit that I think could be used as the same vehicle 

 that we used the U.S. v. Oregon for and the U.S. v. Washington. 

 the all citizen suit for Washington to have some kind of court -or- 

 dered and court-sponsored new institution, if you will, that basi- 

 cally gives the accountability. These are, after all. public agencies 

 only that sit on them and treaty tribes unless the managers of all 

 these agencies, all of them coliecti"vely have responsibilities over 

 some aspect of river operations to get together and hammer out 

 through the auspices of the court what in effect will probably be- 

 come a consent decree. 



In effect, we have that now and I think that is probably what 

 you need. You still would have the accountability. It would be a 

 public process and you would have all the players there so I guess 

 that is the kind of thing that I would be looking for. You need both 

 and quite clearly National Marine Fisheries Service has to be a 

 pari of it but in my \iew not the only one. 



Ms. Unsoeld. Yes. Mr. Lovelin. 



Mr. Lo\TLlN. I hope that we are not to the point in the North- 

 west that we will rely upon the leadership of a Federal judge to 

 move us forward on this decision. I think that it is unfortunate how 

 over the last couple of years that we all have the same desire, the 

 same intent, and frankly we have the potential for a major Endan- 

 gered Species Act success stor\-. 



And there is one common ingredient that we do have that makes 

 it a potential and that is the money. I mean we are spending fan- 

 tastic amounts of money for this effort and I just don't understand 

 why we can't now follow behind or at least look into this scientific 

 plan. 



If we have a debate over science let us have that debate in an 

 open manner. Let us move on to the economic side and into the so- 

 cial impacts of the impact to various user groups but it has to be 

 a one. two. three step process. I believe. 



1 am just concerned, at this point, that certain groups are being 

 cut out and we are using the judge's court to allow certain groups 



