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it over a period of years. And it would be a waste of Federal funds 

 for the Fish and Wildlife Service to come in and do all that work 

 over again. 



So I would urge the Committee to consider a mechanism for rec- 

 ognizing and evaluating work that has already been done in spe- 

 cific areas. 



Mr. Hochbrueckner. Any other questions or comments? 



At this point, I would like to recognize my colleagues, and then 

 I have several questions from the Chair for Ms. Beattie. 



At this point, the Chair recognizes our colleague from Oregon, 

 Ms. Furse. 



Ms. FURSE. I have no comments at the moment, Mr. Chairman. 

 No questions. 



Mr. Hochbrueckner. Mr. Hamburg from California. 



Mr. Hamburg. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 



I just want to briefly comment that this is probably not the best 

 attended hearing on the Hill this morning, but it just may be the 

 most important. Any of us that perused the periodicals or daily 

 newspapers, it seems like there is a real awakening attention to 

 this problem. 



Recently, Mother Jones magazine devoted a lot of their August 

 issue to talking about the decline of the aquatic ecosystems. The 

 L.A. Times did a story on the loss of, really the destruction of the 

 fishery habitat on the East Coast of the United States. 



When we talk about this issue, it is almost so big and so difficult 

 for people to focus on, that I think their attention is geared to more 

 specific things like what should we do in Haiti, or should the Dis- 

 trict of Columbia be allowed to have a domestic partners law. I 

 mean, things like that bring great amounts of attention here on the 

 Hill, but when we are talking about something that is absolutely 

 vital to the future of the species that inhabit this planet, it is a lit- 

 tle hard to get our arms around. 



Also, in terms of the costs that are going to be incurred to just 

 begin to tackle this problem, when you compare the costs that are 

 called for in H.R. 4481 with the amount of money that has been 

 invested in compromising this habitat, it really is the proverbial 

 drop in the bucket. 



We have spent billions of dollars putting dams on our streams 

 and developing hydropower facilities and tremendous amounts of 

 work have been done on Federal mining and grazing lands and for- 

 est lands and now we are talking about just a very small invest- 

 ment to begin the process of restoring habitat and restoring these 

 ecosystems. I hope that we can be visionary enough to keep our 

 focus on this issue and also realize that we are talking here about 

 investing pennies to give ourselves some beginnings in cleaning up 

 the mess that we have created. 



So I did have some questions I wanted to ask, Mr. Chairman, if 

 I could. Maybe I will start with Director Beattie. 



Just to give you a chance to embellish a little bit, I understood 

 from your testimony that you think that although we have various 

 laws and regulations in place, that this legislation is necessary to 

 accomplish the purposes that are set forth, and I would just like 

 you to state again for the record your feeling about the necessity 

 of this kind of a bill and the strategy that it puts forth. 



