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areas, then full watershed restoration protection and restoration 

 strategies should be developed. 



Let me back up and say that, in addition to protecting and secur- 

 ing the key watersheds simultaneously, we believe that ecologically 

 based riparian and flood plan plans must be applied across Federal 

 lands. 



Fifth, again, restoration then follows through a full watershed 

 level restoration strategies. However, we believe, as Congressman 

 DeFazio pointed out, that restoration must take an entirely new 

 approach. Our extensive analysis of the traditional prioritization 

 strategies documents that these approaches have, for the most 

 part, failed. Traditional prioritization strategies, which generally 

 focus on treating the most degraded and isolated stream segments 

 or to address just water temperature or water chemical pollution 

 problems, have failed. They do not address the whole ecological sys- 

 tem. 



They often, in fact, as I think we had heard from other members 

 of this panel, can lead to further problems in the system and not 

 help. At best, these kinds of strategies can be called Band-Aid 

 strategies, at worst some have called them "rat hole" strategies, 

 meaning that we are throwing our money down a rat hole with 

 these strategies. 



We propose pulling together a watershed analysis to identify the 

 conditions and needs of the basin first and then focusing on pro- 

 tecting the remaining healthy head waters, key biotic refuges that 

 we have been calling the riparian areas across the landscape and 

 what we call benchmark watershed. Still, impacted tributary wa- 

 tersheds that exist on Federal lands hold the only hope for long- 

 term research on change in ecosystems and biodiversity over time. 

 I think that is going to be vital to hang on to those areas and to 

 identify and protect the healthy patches of habitat that are found 

 throughout the rest of the system. We call all these biological hot 

 spots. This places the approach on preventing further degradation 

 rather than on attempting to control problems after they occur. 



Following this restoration would focus on trying to link the 

 healthy areas and expand the healthy areas before we plow signifi- 

 cant amounts of dollars into the most degraded areas. We are not 

 saying to not treat the degraded areas but, as Congressman 

 DeFazio said, when dollars are short and limited, we need to make 

 sure that we are protecting and building restoration around the 

 healthier areas before we sink money into highly speculative at- 

 tempts to restore the most degraded areas. We can talk about that 

 in a minute. 



Finally, we recommend to effectively implement the strategy that 

 I have described. A coordinated strategic watershed initiative is 

 needed across the Pacific Northwest. In fact it is needed Nation- 

 wide on river systems all over the country. This must involve a 

 number of points. 



One, uniform, consistent riparian flood plan and habitat protec- 

 tion standards for all Federal land management agencies based on 

 ecological definitions. It must include ecosystem and watershed 

 level planning by all Federal agencies. It must include a com- 

 prehensive restoration strategy that, again, as I described, includes 

 the protection of watershed or river biodiversity watersheds. It 



