Mr. LONGLEY. And the point of my question wasn't to suggest 

 there wasn't a problem because the conservation of particularly 

 forestland and wildlife areas in my State — in the State of Maine is 

 a very, very serious issue right now. We feel that we are at a criti- 

 cal moment in terms of where the State is going to be going into 

 the future. But are there any areas that really jump out at you 

 where there is a serious diminution of wildlife species or in other 

 areas that really it is not even a concern or even maybe an over- 

 abundance of some species to the detriment of others? 



Mr. Ashe. Yes. Again, I would hesitate to say that anyplace was 

 not a concern for us, but, you know, in the Fish and Wildlife Serv- 

 ice, we have certainly over the last few years have had a major 

 focus on the Everglades ecosystem, as has the whole Department 

 of the Interior. And there has been a marked decline in the num- 

 bers and diversity of species there, and that is probably as good an 

 example of any. The Pacific Northwest is another obvious example 

 that jumps to mind. 



Mr. LONGLEY. I would like to jump for a second to the funding 

 issue, and what alternatives did you look at, or did you look at any 

 alternatives as to how this money might be raised? And I am obvi- 

 ously assuming for the moment that you didn't think existing funds 

 were available. But did you look at anything besides sales tax? 



Mr. Ashe. Again, we are not saying that this is the solution at 

 this point. What I was trying to point out in my testimony is that 

 Wallop-Breaux and the Pittman-Robertson Programs really show 

 that a model based on excise tax as a source of revenue can work 

 and can be supported by the people who pay the tax and by the 

 manufacturers who make the products and the people in the end 

 who pay the tax who are the hunters and fishers in America. 



And that has been the key to success in that model, the real 

 sense of partnership and symbiosis between those people and their 

 willingness to support and pay those taxes. So this is clearly a 

 model that — where we know it can be successful if we can develop 

 that type of partnership and that spirit of shared concern and 

 shared destiny with regard to the wildlife resources at risk. 



There certainly are other potential approaches to achieving the 

 financial wherewithal to attack this problem. One obviously is tra- 

 ditional appropriations, which under the Partnerships for Wildlife 

 Act from the early 1980's, we have simply not been able to realize 

 the type of fiscal support under that mechanism that is needed to 

 tackle this problem. 



But that is an approach which could be taken if we could en- 

 hance those resources. There are other approaches which have 

 been talked about in the past in terms of generating revenues, and 

 I am sure you will hear about a number of them today. 



Mr. Longley. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to ask 

 one more question? One of the things that has fascinated me is the 

 extent to which — I am not sure that as a nation we are really ad- 

 dressing the issue of Federal land policy. 



And I want to ask a question, but I want to preface it by saying 

 that, for instance, in the State of Maine we have probably one of 

 the lowest percentages of federally and maybe even publicly owned 

 land in the country. There are other states where the percentage 

 can easily hit 70, 80, 90 percent. 



