24 



in a different manner than they have worked before, and that 

 change means that they need to coordinate among themselves the 

 exchange of their birds and develop stud books and manage their 

 genetic resources and manage their birds, not just consider them 

 as personal pets, not just only reach to the wild each time they 

 would like to have new blood stock. This kind of organization will 

 take a little time to put in place, but the avicultural community 

 stands to gain much by it if they would do that. So I do think that 

 this is the other issue that we have to deal with here, changes that 

 we are asking of this community that result from no longer relying 

 on the wild populations. 



Mr. Saxton. Well, thank you very much. I have no further ques- 

 tions at this time. The members of the subcommittee may have 

 some additional questions, particularly those who are not able to 

 be with us this morning, and so the record will remain open. We 

 may ask you to respond to further questions in writing. Thank you 

 very much. 



Now let me introduce our fourth and final panel: Mr. Frank 

 Bond, who is the General Counsel of the North American Falconers 

 Association; Mr. Marshall Meyers of the Pet Industry Joint Coun- 

 cil; Dr. Susan Clubb of the Association of Avian Veterinarians; and 

 Gary Lilienthal, General Counsel to the American Federation of 

 Aviculture. Once again, each of you will have five minutes for your 

 oral testimony. Your written testimony will appear in the record as 

 you submit it. And we will begin with Mr. Frank Bond. You may 

 proceed, sir. 



STATEMENT OF FRANK BOND, GENERAL COUNSEL, NORTH 

 AMERICAN FALCONERS ASSOCIATION 



Mr. Bond. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the com- 

 mittee. I have submitted a written statement which I would like 

 to have printed as part of the record. 



I am Frank Bond. I serve as General Counsel for the North 

 American Falconers Association and have had the pleasure of being 

 at a committee table like this many times before. Unfortunately 

 when Mr. Leape had suggested that they put together the working 

 group to deal with this issue, we were not invited to that 

 windowless room to collaborate with them. And frankly, it wasn't 

 an oversight on their part, because the first iteration of the Act in 

 1992 really didn't deal with the issues of captive propagation with 

 respect to raptors and the import/export problems dealing with 

 Falconiformes, the family Falconiformes including raptors, until 

 the final bill came out when we found we got swept in as well. And 

 so for that reason I apologize for coming to the table three years 

 later, but want to express our problems and our opinion. 



Falconiformes, birds of prey, can only be used for several pur- 

 poses: education, conservation programs, captive propagation, fal- 

 conry, zoological programs, and rehabilitation purposes. Probably 

 as a group of birds it is the most highly regulated group of birds 

 in North America and indeed in the world. They are listed — ^vir- 

 tually every single member of the family of Falconiformes is listed 

 under Appendix I or Appendix II of CITES. For somebody to come 

 in and import a bird or export a bird he has to comply with 50 

 C.F.R., the Code of Federal Regulations, at 21.28, 21.29, 22.24, 



