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to long-term effects or not. It may be quite a few years before the 

 areas that are cut are vulnerable to decay. And then once that hap- 

 pens, it is often a matter of a decade or more before those affect 

 numbers, the headwaters work their way down to the fish-bearing 

 streams. It can be misleading to look at the first years after an op- 

 eration and use that to decide whether it has been successful in 

 protecting the environment or not. And of course 



Mr. DeFazio. And if you were only removing the trees that were 

 already dead, you would ultimately get the same effect — perhaps, 

 in the tree fall it provides an impediment on erosion, but not to 

 slope loss or erosion? 



Dr. Frissell. Clearly, you are talking about degrees of effect and 

 by taking fewer trees, you reduce the impact and you may change 

 the kinds of impacts that you get. I think it is more of what level 

 you are willing to accept as far as risk in those areas. 



Dr. Ice. I would like to make a comment on the conditions that 

 you are describing. This is what is sort of called conditioning, 

 where there is a particular hazard associated with it, and you de- 

 velop a management strategy to address that risk. You are looking 

 at harvesting of those dead trees using a helicopter systena, so you 

 are conditioning your system to address a particular condition. You 

 have minimized the risk, and I would say that the additional risk 

 associated with that level of activity is certainly quite low. 



Mr. DeFazio. Mr. Higgins. 



Mr. Higgins. I thought Chris was saying that we shouldn't be 

 experimenting with forestry in the areas that are last bastions of 

 fish. I think we shouldn't be experimenting in the keystone habi- 

 tats. 



Mr. DeFazio. That is a different point. It is good to make that 

 distinction if we are talking primarily about roadless areas, but I 

 took it as more sort of a global statement regarding forestry prac- 

 tices. . . 



Dr. Frissell. No, I clearly meant that in the context of the criti- 

 cal watershed areas. 



Mr. DeFazio. That goes far beyond roadless areas if you look at 

 all 137. And there are differing levels of risk. When you say criti- 

 cal, I think of the 137. 



Now, you probably mean some part of 137 is critical. It depends 

 on what definition we are using for "critical." Among those critical 

 watersheds, many of those are previously harvested managed areas 

 and on differing Forest Service and BLM; mostly Forest Service. 



Just in terms of legislating— and I will direct it first to Mr. 

 Doppelt, and anybody else can jump in after he responds — I guess, 

 first, you know, why don't we need to legislate versus the process, 

 you know, the agencies are going through in terms of planning? 

 But if you could discuss now how prescriptive these things should 

 be and whether or not that is the right direction to go. 



One of the later witnesses made a point that each watershed is 

 unique. And the problem with Congress getting prescriptive is it is 

 difficult to say we have a bill and there is 111 watersheds, and we 

 are going to have 137 different provisions of law, and precriptions 

 for 111 different watersheds, versus giving some sort of interpre- 

 tive authority to apply some standards to the agencies. I would 

 pose it that if you look at the southern parts of the range, we are 



