of exotic birds and reauthorization will confirm our commitment to 

 continue this leadership. We look forward to working with this 

 committee on the reauthorization process. 



Mr. Chairman, I have a written statement which I would ask 

 your permission to enter into the record. It also includes a number 

 of attachments which describe in more detail our program. And I 

 would also be happy to answer any questions which you may have. 



Mr. Saxton. Thank you. Your written statement certainly will be 

 included in the record without objection. 



[Statement of Marshall Jones may be found at end of hearing.] 



Mr. Saxton. I suspect that your characterization of the Act as 

 user-friendly may be subject to some questions by some panelists 

 who will follow you. Let us suppose that they have already told us 

 some stories about how difficult it is to deal with the Act. Would 

 you expound on your contention that this program as it exists cur- 

 rently is user-friendly? 



Mr. Jones. Mr. Chairman, my intent there was to say that that 

 is our goal. 



Mr. Saxton. I am sorry. OK. 



Mr. Jones. I won't say that 



Mr. Saxton. That you obviously have not quite reached. 



Mr. Jones. If you set a high enough goal, it may be something 

 that you never reach. I have administered various kinds of permits 

 programs for a number of years and I found that one thing is true, 

 you always have to keep reinventing your process. It is never per- 

 fect when you are dealing with the public. There are several things 

 about the Wild Bird Conservation Act, though, that I think that 

 have lent themselves to misunderstandings. The law is new and it 

 is unprecedented, and I think there were widespread fears that the 

 law would have a greater impact on people's individual activities 

 than the law actually provided for. I also think when we propose 

 rules we try to propose something which reflects our best thoughts 

 about how law should be implemented. In the case of some of our 

 proposals, we received a lot of comments that have told us that 

 there may be improvements that we can make. We are taking 

 those comments very seriously and we are working to come up with 

 a process that will be as user-friendly as we can make it today. 

 And we will keep constantly striving to improve that for the future. 



Mr. Saxton. How long does it take generally today to work 

 through the process from the time someone applies for a permit to 

 the time that they receive one? 



Mr. Jones. For personal pets, which are the kind of permits that 

 have the most immediate impact on someone, we are able to do 

 those now in less than two weeks. Our general goal for permits of 

 all kinds is 60 to 90 days. We have been able to meet that target 

 in some cases and not in others. For example, for the permits for 

 cooperative breeding programs, we endeavor to contact tne bird au- 

 thorities and the CITES management authorities in countries of or- 

 igin. International communications take time, and so we have 

 found we are not always able to meet our deadline of 60 to 90 days. 

 I do not have an exact average processing time, Mr. Chairman, but 

 we could certainly supply that to you for the record. But we are 

 working constantly to shorten those times with our goal to have it 

 the minimum possible in order to 



