225 



Mr. DOOLITTLE. Mr. Snyder, if you know, now that they are hold- 

 ing up the CASPO report, which you refer to as CALOWL, is that 

 the new term? I always called it CASPO. 



Mr. Snyder. CASPO was the original report designed by a com- 

 mittee of the State of California, private interest groups and the 

 Federal agencies to deal with the scientific and technical questions 

 with respect to California spotted owls. That ended up in the 

 CASPO report scientific recommendations which were put into in- 

 terim guidelines which are, in effect, management within the Cali- 

 fornia spotted owl range for the National Forests. The CALOWL 

 EIS was a NEPA document that was to basically supplant the in- 

 terim guidelines and put more permanent guidance in place with 

 respect to habitat management for owls. 



Mr. DOOLITTLE. In order to go from CASPO to CALOWL, in light 

 of holding up CALOWL for the SNEP report, what is that going to 

 do time-wise? 



Mr. Snyder. The CALOWL report basically has taken 3 years 

 since the time that the interim guidelines were put in place, and 

 that is because of the complexity of the report and the desire by 

 the agencies to make it an ecosystem management report. I am 

 afraid that if we wait for SNEP to come out and have to revisit this 

 whole question, we could be looking at another year or two of addi- 

 tional amendments to the plan, draft Environmental Impact State- 

 ments and a number of other things that would be put in place. 



Mr. DOOLITTLE. So we are going to go through a new round of 

 Environmental Impact Statements as a result of SNEP coming out 

 prior to the CALOWL being released? 



Mr. Snyder. I think it depends how the report is used. Obvi- 

 ously, this was a report that was intended to be for congressional 

 use. It sounds like that has been expanded to a certain degree and 

 that the administration is holding it for their own policy use at this 

 point in time. 



It looks to me like it is going to be a little bit of a wrestling 

 match about whose report it is and how it gets used. I anticipate 

 the administration probably will delay and cause more environ- 

 mental analysis to be done. 



Mr. DOOLITTLE. Mr. Unger, you are sitting back there. Will you 

 come up and comment on this, because we are sick to death of 

 CASPO, and hearing that this could be delayed a year or two 

 would be completely unacceptable. 



Mr. Unger. I understand the committee's concern and Mr. Sny- 

 der's concern. The Forest Service is committed to move as rapidly 

 as possible with the decision on the California owl. The purpose of 

 this delay is to see if there is any significant new information in 

 the SNEP report that would need to be taken into account. 



If it does need to be taken into account, there are a number of 

 ways to proceed. One would be in the CALOWL process itself, an- 

 other would be separate forest plan amendments, another would be 

 modification of project decisions. 



There is no, certainly there are always concerns that things may 

 take more time than we anticipate. From a Forest Service stand- 

 point, we believe this can be done expeditiously and it would not 

 require a lengthy period. 



