300 



every portion of the United States, If you doubt that, I 

 draw your attention to a Government Accounting Office report 

 entitled Ecosystem Management- -Additional Actions Needed to 

 Adequately Test a Promising Approach. That report was 

 issued as document GAO/RCED-94-111 in August, 1994 and was a 

 report to Congress. Figure 3.3. at page 46, of that 

 document presents a map by which the United States Fish amd 

 Wildlife Service "has adopted tentative ecosystem boundaries 

 based on watersheds to organize its activities nationwide 

 and to set ecosystemwide goals and objectives." That map 

 depicts an ecosystem covering every inch of a map of the 

 United States! A copy of that map is attached to this 

 statement as Exhibit l. But, the map is much more dramatic 

 when you review your own copy of the report which was 

 furnished for your benefit. 



Previously, proposals have been brought before Congress to 

 establish federal land planning which would include planning 

 ittqpact on private property. Each time the proposals have 

 been defeated. Primarily they have been defeated because of 

 the interest of Congress in preserving private property 

 rights, and because of the refusal of Congress to turn over 

 its authority regarding the public lands to a centralized 

 federal planning agency. 



The United States Senate refused to ratify the Biodiversity 

 Treaty. One of the primary reasons was the adverse impact 

 on private property rights which would result . A second 

 major reason was that the authority of the Congress would be 

 subverted to centralized planners who could utilize treaties 

 and international law to override national statutes which 

 now control the federal meinagement agencies . 



But, when the defeat of the Treaty was evident, a Memorandum 

 of Understanding was entered into by over twenty federal 

 agencies for the purpose of commencing cuid implementing 

 Ecosystem planning outside the confines of the statutes by 

 which the Congress has controlled the land management 

 agencies. Even though the Congress had not appropriated 

 funds for this widespread federal planning, the agencies 

 moved cQiead by siphoning off fxinds and personnel from public 

 land MANAGEMENT duties and dedicating them to Ecosystem 

 PI coming. 



The Ecosystem teams claim to have commenced these projects 

 under the alleged justification of pursuing "forest health" 

 as called for by the President in his Forest Plan for the 

 Northwest portion of our nation. The project started as the 

 East side Project, to cover the eastern part of Washington 

 and Oregon from the Cascade mountains . But in steady, swift 

 movements, the land control effort spread to the point where 

 it now includes all of Idaho xinder the umbrella of the Upper 

 Columbia River Basin Project. The focus has spread from 

 concerns of forest health to a scheme by which all uses of 



