192 



talking about roads may be a bigger problem, and in the northern 

 part of the range, it may be in stream problems or riparian habitat 

 problems. So it would be hard to write a prescription. 



So I am cautious of anything. I have gone down the road of try- 

 ing to get prescriptive of solving some of these problems, and I 

 don't know that the Congress is capable, or any law is capable of 

 getting prescriptive enough. So I would ask to you comment on 

 those two points. 



Dr. DOPPELT. Mr. DeFazio, there are two issues there that I will 

 talk about, but I think there are at least seven or eight reasons 

 why legislation is needed, from our point of view, rather than to 

 allow the agencies to do this administratively, and they interrelate 

 with the second question you asked. The first reason is that it is 

 clear that we need uniform, consistent standards that lead to uni- 

 form rules and regulations for the protection and restoration of ri- 

 parian areas for the definition of a key watersheds, what is allowed 

 in a key watershed. 



We have had recent meeting with the BLM and the Forest Serv- 

 ice, where it was clear that even to the same river system they still 

 don't know what they are doing between the Forest Service and 

 BLM. So we may run up into a situation where they do this admin- 

 istratively and where the BLM deals with riparian areas on the 

 same rivers different than the Forest Service. So one, we need 

 clear, consistent prescriptions, but at the same time, we need to 

 make sure that the clarity gets all the way down to the local man- 

 agement level. 



At best, despite almost 15, 20 years of NEPA, now with the man- 

 date to establish rules and regulations for the protection of riparian 

 areas, the Forest Service has still not done this. At best, they have 

 guidelines which are not a legally binding statement 



Mr. DeFazio. Let me give an example to help clarify your think- 

 ing on that. 



When we look at the "Gang of Four" prescriptions and riparian 

 areas, when you adopt a mandatory setback for a no harvest or 

 very limited entry sort of system, it doesn't take into account topog- 

 raphy, because you may have gone over a ridge and have abso- 

 lutely no impact. That is one very practical comment. If the Con- 

 gress says a mile or quarter of a mile; how do you deal with that? 



Dr. DoPPELT. I think the question is what kind of prescriptions, 

 and what we put in our proposal, that it be ecologically determined 

 and, therefore, they need to go out into each watershed and meas- 

 ure the 100-year flood plains level. So I think the prescriptions 

 need to state unequivocally that it is not arbitrary zones, so to 

 speak, but, in fact, it is ecologically determined. There is a couple 

 of other things 



Mr. DeFazio. One more. If you recall, maybe, one of my first ef- 

 forts at legislation to resolve this ongoing crisis in the Northwest 

 did adopt that approach and perhaps not your group but other 

 groups were extraordinarily derogative as to not adopting arbitrary 

 distance as opposed to a ecological measurement, because they 

 didn't trust the agencies to make ecological measurements. You are 

 putting us in a box. 



I am looking for the answers, and I am trying to be helpful. But 

 in proposing something I get trashed a year ago and now it looks 



