81 



ment. And I think that we are in pretty complete agreement with 

 Pacific Rivers in those areas. 



Mr. DeFazio. Okay. And if I could put one final question? This 

 has to do with looking a little longer term. And I know that things 

 are okay on the short term that perhaps it is hard to look at the 

 long term; and we have not completed the last cycle of the planning 

 process. 



But in legislation I proposed last year, I looked at one of the 

 longer-term objectives, in my mind, of determining appropriate ac- 

 tivities on Federal lands in the future in planning to, essentially, 

 discard, some of our historic boundaries. 



That is, we drew up forest boundary, ranger districts, depending 

 on an archaic standard. You couldn't get over this ridge to that 

 area, historically; but we didn't accumulate these on a biological or 

 ecological basis. And my idea would be that when we finally move 

 forward again with the next cycle of the planning process that we 

 can look at reaggregating our planning and doing it on a cumu- 

 lative watershed basis as opposed to a geographic basis ranger dis- 

 trict by ranger district. 



Mr. Penfold. Mr. DeFazio, you have completely the right idea. 



Mr. DeFazio. I appreciate that. You are invited back any time. 



Mr. Leonard. We are going to have to deal on all kinds of scales. 

 We have issues that transcend many watersheds. The owl issue: 

 You cannot deal with one watershed on the owl issue. 



But it is absolutely true that our existing forest boundaries are 

 not tied to ecosystems management on any scale, and we have got 

 to get that in line. 



As you are aware of, there is some real impediments in terms of 

 payments and what not that make it difficult to change administra- 

 tive boundaries. I think we need to pay attention, though, to plan- 

 ning for the resource as opposed to planning by administrative 

 boundary. Maybe we can address that without having to address 

 the administrative boundary problem. 



Mr. DeFazio. In fact, in reflection on this, I haven't yet had this 

 discussion with the Secretary of Agriculture; but I have had the 

 discussion with the Secretary of Interior and some of his staff. And 

 they showed a willingness to begin to look at a more coordinated 

 planning approach. 



In part, we are in deep trouble in the courts because BLM went 

 this way and the Forest Service said we have a great plan here, 

 but it depended on the BLM going this way. 



The BLM went that way, and the judge had a fit, and we ended 

 up under injunction. I think that area, for the next four years, 

 hopefully eight, has come to an end; and I would look forward to 

 working with you folks in the Forest Service identifying where 

 there are statutory barriers and dealing with those. 



Mr. Vento. In fact, I had a question to follow up. It is just the 

 two of us here; but on planning, I would be happy to yield further 

 time to the gentleman from Oregon, because the Forest Service 

 today, in their statement, talked about a strategy, and the BLM 

 talked about Resource Management Plans. And I would just like to 

 know how that is satisfying this particular strategy. Is it done? 

 Does it satisfy protecting the salmonid habitat and the role in the 

 reversal, in the decline of these populations? 



