75 



stocks in the Pacific Northwest and all along the West Coast, in- 

 deed well before there was a drought. 



In the 1970s and early 1980s, they were very much on the backs 

 of the National Marine Fisheries Service to try to do something 

 about that. In fact, it is my understanding that the Congress re- 

 acted and passed the Pacific Northwest Electric Power Planning 

 and Conservation Act in 1980 to try to address some of these con- 

 cerns, and the goal of that act was to try to prevent us from getting 

 to the state where we had to list some of these endangered species, 

 and the problem is that for whatever reasons, we failed to do that. 



So as Mr. Dicks said this morning, there is no sense finger point- 

 ing but rather to look at how do we arrive at solutions. And cer- 

 tainly we would agree that looking at things on a watershed basis 

 and ecosystem basis is an appropriate way to go to solve these 

 problems and prevent us from having to put more species on the 

 endangered species list. 



Mr. Vento. Well, I am making an assumption that the reason 

 you are all talking about habitat and land management is we 

 asked you to talk about that, but also there is a presumption that 

 this is an essential limiting factor; that the land management prac- 

 tices — yes, Mr. Edwards. 



Mr. Edwards. Mr. Chairman, as I said in my opening statement, 

 I don't think there really is a silver bullet. I think it varies from 

 what part of the ecosystem you are talking about. 



Certainly on the Columbia River, where you have four dams on 

 the Snake River that are taking 15 percent of the Salmon smolts 

 at each dam, or the Grand Coulee Dam, which has eliminated for- 

 ever thousands of miles of habitats, one could argue that fish pas- 

 sage and dams have more impact, and then these other things have 

 added to it as we get into some of our coastal stocks where hydro- 

 electric does play a bigger factor, but other things such as land 

 management practices and all play a factor in that. 



But I don't think we can sit back and specifically identify anv 

 one thing. It has been a cumulative effect. You have to look at each 

 of these systems entirely from a holistic approach if you are going 

 to apply your problem solving process to try to address the issue. 



Mr. Vento. Well, I might as well hit a home run on my limiting 

 factor question. Mr. Williams. 



Mr. Williams. Mr. Chairman, I would like to add, if I could, that 

 it is an important point to recall that as the health of these sys- 

 tems, both as the health of the particular stocks and the health of 

 the watersheds decline, that they do become more vulnerable to 

 these types of droughts and floods and El Nino events and lose 

 their resiliency. 



So, for example, as to the winter run chinook salmon in the Sac- 

 ramento River, the effects of the drought on that population, which 

 recently crashed to near just a couple of thousand spawning adults, 

 may indeed have been sort of the straw that broke the camel's back 

 as compared to the historic ability of that run to have a much high- 

 er resiUency and be much less impacted by droughts and floods and 

 triGSG sorts 01 tilinSTS 



Mr. Calvert. Again, I would state that I understand that there 

 is some excesses that need to be corrected, but on the other hand, 

 there are other factors beyond the mining industry, the timber in- 



