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where the agencies are under tremendous pressure to conduct timber sales to 

 restore the cut. For example, in the Columbia River basin, the area I know 

 best, the Forest Service has reneged on express promises to the Northwest 

 Power Plaiming Council to revise cattle grazing allotment management plans 

 and has yet to assess the adequacy of its forest and resource management 

 plans for protecting salmon habitat and rebuilding the runs. It has also failed 

 to implement the most vital aspects of the Columbia Basin Fish Habitat 

 Management Policy Implementation Guide (PIG) that it held out as being the 

 cornerstone of its commitment to help rebuild salmon runs in the Northwest. 



Indeed, with few exceptions, all federal agencies in the region have 

 failed to establish specific objectives to protect salmon stocks, have failed to 

 establish timelines for accomplishing what vague promises are made and 

 failed to establish mechanisms for review or accountability to determine the 

 success of their salmon recovery efforts. The Forest Service, regionwide, 

 continues to emphasize structural mitigations for degraded or destroyed 

 salmon habitat at the expense of more effective preventive measures or 

 restoration of degraded habitat as proposed by the Pacific Rivers Council. 



Agency budget requests for salmon protection measures are often not 

 made despite commitments made to the contrary. The President's FY 1993 

 budget for the Forest Service, BLM, Bureau of Reclamation, NMFS, F&WS and 

 Corps of Engineers all included zero funding requests for important compo- 

 nents of the regional salmon strategy adopted by the Power Plarming Council 

 and agreed to by these same agencies. I am confident that practice was 

 repeated elsewhere in the region. 



With the call to reduce the federal deficit through reduced federal 

 spending, some funding requests will clearly need to be cut -- but hopefully 

 not for environmental protection measures that will create jobs, not eliminate 

 them. Increased numbers of returning salmon means increased numbers of 

 jobs and increased wealth and economic stability for coastal communities, 

 virtually all of which are timber-dependent too. 



Contrarily, if we fail to take needed aaion, there is a corresponding cost 

 as well. It is the cost of unemployment, food stamps and welfare and all of 

 the accompanying social pathologies. That price is often hidden from the 



