humanity will drive a large fraction of the planet's species to extinction within the next century.

Some popular accounts of extinctions cast doubt on these conclusions. They remind me of my biannual nightmare of grading bad term papers. Easily verified information is written incorrectly or otherwise misinterpreted or misquoted. In my written testimony, I have included reviews showing how badly bungled some of these

accounts are.

I will not speculate on how a minority of journalists, you will note here, he says journalists, not scientists, feel so confident in their abilities to reject the consensus of so many scientists. I pray that they will not feel qualified to extend their mission to my father-in-law's position of brain surgery.

[Laughter.]

Senator REID. Now, Mr. Secretary, this from a scientist, professor of ecology at the University of Tennessee, tends to paint a very dark picture of various species in the world and in this country. Would you agree or disagree with Dr. Pimm?

Secretary BABBITT. Senator, you've engaged me on the ground of my professional scientific training. I will try to resist getting into this in detail, except to say that the people who are saying there is not an extinction crisis are pseudo-scientists and phonies. There isn't any question at all about that. And the causes are well known. The protagonists who never made it through elementary paleontology or ecology are saying, well, look at the end of the Pleistocene. There were extinctions then, there was 1,000 feet of ice covering New York City and Chicago, these changes take place all the time. Well, of course, changes do take place in geologic time. The important thing is that they take place on time scales that are so long that evolutionary adaptation works around them. Your State of Nevada 10,000 years ago looked like Lake Superior.

Senator REID. But doesn't that also, Mr. Secretary, answer one criticism that the Endangered Species Act has had, that it takes a long time for these species to recover? It's part of nature, isn't it?

Secretary BABBITT. That's exactly correct.

Senator REID. Now, Mr. Secretary, you mentioned briefly the experience in Nevada with the desert tortoise. That's been a positive experience under the Act, has it not been?

Secretary BABBITT. Senator, I think it has, yes.

Senator REID. I mean, I know that some people have objected to what had to be done. But is there any doubt in the mind of your or your scientists that the desert tortoise, if the present plan goes forward, will survive?

Secretary BABBITT. It's not entirely free of doubt. But there are some odd kinds of issues, which I won't go into. But my personal opinion, yes. I think the chances are very good.

Senator REID. Mr. Secretary, we've had a number of hearings on the issue of takings. The issue of takings, of course, comes up in the context of the Endangered Species Act on occasion, is that not true?

Secretary BABBITT. Yes.

Senator REID. You've heard the cry to change the law, so that takings become more difficult. The very hearing we had yesterday,

I referred to the Constitution, where the Constitution says, nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation. Do you know how we with a law can improve upon the language of the Constitution of the United States?

Secretary BABBITT. No, sir.

Senator REID. Mr. Secretary, there's been a lot of talk about the negative impact on the economy of the Endangered Species Act. Would you elaborate on that?

Secretary BABBITT. Well, my sense is that in each case that good administration of this Act over any reasonable time period increases the prospects for productive economic activity, that there is no conflict between the two, and that in fact the sustainable and productive uses of ecosystems in the long run will create a lot of jobs.

That's what it's about in the northwest. It's about a timber industry which will provide jobs for our kids. The salmon issue is about the same thing. It's about fisheries jobs for our kids. I have yet to see a case in which these issues, these laws, cannot be administered in a way that creates in the long run in the middle term and usually in the short run, and the reasons a species comes to a place, because of the values of biodiversity and landscapes and wide open spaces, and the future of places like Phoenix and Las Vegas and Boise, it seems to me is directly linked to our success in finding this kind of balance. So I don't see the conflict.

Can I go back to the Pleistocene?

[Laughter.]

Senator REID. I'll pass on that.

Senator KEMPTHORNE. Senator Reid, I have just a couple questions that I'd like to ask Mr. Hall. Do you have a couple other questions that you'd like to

Senator REID. I had one question I wanted to ask the Secretary. There was an announcement made, I believe yesterday, because I heard about it today on public radio, about the President issuing an order that the Endangered Species Act and any wetlands legislation would not apply to a landowner who had owned less than 5 acres. Is that true?

Secretary BABBITT. Senator, that is correct.

Senator REID. When, Mr. Secretary, will that go into effect, or do you know?

Secretary BABBITT. There is a regulatory, I believe either an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking or a draft regulation out on the street right now.

Senator REID. That certainly should do away with a lot of the stories that people keep talking about of problems with small property owners, is that true?

Secretary BABBITT. Well, that's certainly our intention.

Senator REID. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator KEMPTHORNE. Senator Reid, thank you.

Mr. Hall, I know you would have been disappointed had I not asked you a few questions. Let me ask you this, we'll move very quickly. Do the commercial fisheries which you say are managed through regional councils, have to obey the Endangered Species Act when one of the stocks are on the list of endangered or threatened? Mr. HALL. Yes, sir, they do.

Senator KEMPTHORNE. Does the jurisdiction of the regional council extend very far to sea?

Mr. HALL. The regional councils manage the fisheries outside State boundaries to the 200 mile limit.

Senator KEMPTHORNE. Does the jurisdiction of the regional councils extend up the rivers into fresh water?

Mr. HALL. No.

Senator KEMPTHORNE. When a listed stock is mixed in

Mr. HALL. Mr. Chairman, the only clarification is, whenever you have take that is going to occur inside the river that the fishery management councils take that into account.

Senator KEMPTHORNE. OK. When a listed stock is mixed in with a non-listed stock of a commercial fishery, does the regional council allow the take of the listed stock?

Mr. HALL. There are cases where a small, incidental take is unavoidable. So there is a very small take allowed on the three listed stocks in the Pacific Northwest.

Senator KEMPTHORNE. Is that a violation of the Endangered Species Act?

Mr. HALL. No, Mr. Chairman. The Endangered Species Act allows for incidental take of listed species. There are cases where it's unavoidable, and in this particular case, it's a very small number.

Senator KEMPTHORNE. All right. Then many thousands of wild salmon have been tagged with the pit transmitter tags. Are these tags ever searched for among the fishes captured in commercial fisheries in U.S. waters?

Mr. HALL. Yes.

Senator KEMPTHORNE. Can you tell me the process?

Mr. HALL. I would defer to some of our scientists or technical experts for the exact details. But we review the landing data, and we have a better understanding of the mixture of the stocks in that particular fishery than any place else. So we have an understanding of how many stock, when you have 30,000 fish that are caught in an ocean fishery, there may only be 10 that are Snake River stocks.

But we have a pretty good understanding at this point of which fisheries, what the mixture is of the various stocks and various fisheries, both in Alaska and British Columbia and off the coast of the Pacific Northwest.

Senator KEMPTHORNE. So off the coast, is that sort of information. sought and obtained?

Mr. HALL. Yes.

Senator KEMPTHORNE. Of any commercial fishing?

Mr. HALL. Yes.

Senator KEMPTHORNE. For the United States, what have you. OK. Then you describe an independent scientific peer review process in the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration that assures that high standards are met. Last month Will Stelle, of the NMFS, testified before this subcommittee that he did not have such a process in place for his recent decisions on spill policy. Is that a correct statement?

Mr. HALL. Well, I'm not sure exactly what Mr. Stelle said. There were several scientific panels in place that contributed to that process in developing the spill policy. The gas bubble panel was a world

class panel of scientists who came together and provided scientific information that led to the monitoring program and the way they formulated that process. So I'm not clear exactly what he said.

Senator KEMPTHORNE. All right. Then, finally, Mr. Hall, you described the seven member scientific recovery team which NMFS appointed to develop the Snake River salmon recovery plan. We had members from that team who testified last month as well. They stated they were not pleased with how their recommendations were treated by NMFS. Can you comment on that?

Mr. HALL. There's a letter from Don Bevin, who's the chairman of the team, which states that most of the recommendations they felt very comfortable with. There were a very small number of disagreements, and we're continuing to work through with those disagreements.

The establishment of the scientific panel, with the help of the National Academy of Sciences, I think will be instrumental in providing an objective basis. But as you know from your experience, these scientific disagreements have gone back decades. We're working very hard to resolve them and move forward. But I don't want to minimize the disagreements that occur.

Senator KEMPTHORNE. Thank you very much.

Mr. HALL. Mr. Chairman, I would like to add, just in case, I know how difficult the issue of land resource management planning consultations has been in the State of Idaho. Just in your State alone, we have now completed 768 informal consultations, and 170 formal consultations. That leaves only 58 that have not been completed, and again, they'll be completed in short order.

I think that if you look at the situation we have today and what we faced 6 months ago, and I think a lot of it's due to your leadership and putting a lot of attention on this issue, we've made a lot of progress there. We get a lot of attention when things are not going well, but I think that the Fisheries Service deserves a lot of credit for getting this situation under control.

Senator KEMPTHORNE. I appreciate that.

We'll take a brief recess as we get to the next panel.

[Recess.]

Senator KEMPTHORNE. If everyone will take their seats, we'll get started with our next panel.

Here with us today is Dr. Michael Clegg, acting dean, College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, University of California at Riverside; Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Department of Zoology, Oregon State University; and Dr. Stuart Pimm, professor of Ecology, University of Tennessee.

We do have formal copies of all your prepared statements which will be made part of the record. So in order to be able to accommodate all panels, I'd like to ask if you could just stay within the 5minute timeframe. We'll use the light system, so that with one minute remaining, you'll see the yellow light. At that point, if you could begin to conclude your remarks.

Again, we're very appreciative that you have all come from so far to be here. So we're mindful of that, we look forward to hearing from you.

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL T. CLEGG, ACTING DEAN, COLLEGE OF NATURAL AND AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT RIVERSIDE

Dr. CLEGG. Thank you, Senator Kempthorne. It's a great privilege to have the opportunity to testify before you. Senator KEMPTHORNE. Thank you.

Dr. CLEGG. My name is Michael Clegg, and I'm a professor of genetics at the University of California at Riverside. I chaired the National Research Council's Committee on Scientific Issues in the Endangered Species Act, whose report entitled "Science and the Endangered Species Act" was released on May 24, 1995. I'd like to respectfully request that this be made a part of the record. Senator KEMPTHORNE. Without objection. [Material to be supplied follows:]

Dr. CLEGG. The committee that my colleagues and I represent includes a wide spectrum of expertise in areas such as ecology, population biology, systematics, paleontology, wildlife management, law decision analysis and economics. We come from universities and private industry. Some of us have government experience. Our report is a consensus statement that reflects the range of our perspectives, and we all agree with its conclusions and recommenda

tions.

Our study was initiated by the National Research Council approximately 22 years ago in response to a bipartisan request from three congressional leaders: former House Speaker Thomas Foley, Senator Mark Hatfield, and Representative Gerry Studds. This was a most welcome request, because sound public policy depends on sound science.

We were asked to consider, the science that subsumes six fundamental issues in the Endangered Species Act. Those were definition of species as used in ESA, the role of habitat in conservation biology, recovery planning and its implementation, risk assessment, conflict between endangered species, and the timing of key decisions under the Act.

We were asked to provide scientific advice. Let me say what we were not asked to do. We were not asked to assess the regulatory framework, and we were not asked to comment on the societal and political tradeoffs that are associated with the Endangered Species Act, and we have not commented on those issues.

Science has expanded greatly in the 20 years or more since the original passage of the ESA. This is particularly true in areas like computational science, conservation biology, genetics, ecology, and systematics. We tried to assess this expansion of scientific knowledge with respect to the ESA, and we came to the general conclusion that the law is grounded in sound science. Conserving species means conserving habitats. And the Act's emphasis on habitat conservation, is in our judgment, appropriate.

But we believe that there are a number of areas where specific improvements can be made to the ESA. For instance, in the area of habitat, the designation of critical habitat as envisaged under the Act is slow and arduous and sometimes compromises the goals of the Act. We recommend the designation of a new category called survival habitat as a stop-gap short-term measure to prevent the further decline of endangered species once they have been listed.