and it completely changed his attitude about bats. When I saw him again years later, he was still keeping a watchful eye on that cave.

Of the world's nearly 1,000 species of bats, 44 sweep across the night skies of North America. I have concentrated on many of these species the past few years, although I have studied bats around the globe. North American bats are essential to keeping populations of night-flying insects in balance. Individual bats can catch hundreds hourly, and large colonies eat tons nightly, including countless beetles and moths that cost farmers and foresters a fortune, not to mention mosquitoes in our backyards. A colony of just 150 big brown bats can eat enough cucumber beetles each summer to protect local farmers from 18 million of their rootworm larvae. This pest alone costs U.S. growers a billion dollars annually.

Bats in the deserts of the U.S. Southwest perform an invaluable service by pollinating the region's most important cactus species, feeding on nectar and transferring pollen from plant to plant by night, just as insects do by day. Bats also feed on cactus fruits and disperse their seeds in flight with their droppings.

The image of bats has become a lot more appealing since the founding of Bat Conservation International (BCI) in 1982. Many myths have been largely debunked— that bats are blind, will tangle in people's hair, and are usually rabid.

None of these statements is true.

In fact, the odds of contracting rabies from a bat are extremely remote for anyone who simply leaves them alone. Even sick bats rarely attack people or pets, although they may bite in self-defense, like any wild animal, and should be handled only by

experts.

Increased awareness of bats' beneficial nature has stimulated some protection. I have often worked with pest-control operators who previously poisoned bats, instructing them on how to exclude unwanted bats from buildings by hanging netting loosely over their entrance and exit holes. This allows bats to leave but prevents their return. BCI has also worked with leaders in the cave exploration community, and many spelunkers now avoid caves when bats are present.

Yet serious threats remain, including outright killing of bats, destruction or disturbance of their cave habitats, and, recently, increased closing of abandoned mines. Six bat species in the U.S. are endangered, and 18 others are candidates for addition to the endangered species list. With 24 species out of 44 in such dire straits, bats as a group rank as the most endangered land mammals in the U.S.—even though a few individual colonies number in the millions.

Caves sometimes bring out the worst in people. In Alabama, where I did my doctoral research, Hambrick Cave once sheltered a colony of 250,000 gray bats, many of which I banded. Suddenly, in 1973, they all vanished. I discovered that visitors had built fires in the cave entrance, suffocating many of the bats, and Fourth of July revelers had exploded fireworks inside, apparently killing the rest.

My reporting of this and similar calamities helped lead to the gray bat's addition to the endangered list. Fortunately, there is a happy ending. The Tennessee Valley Authority, which owns the cave, blocked the entrance to humans but left a way for new bats to enter, and today the Hambrick Cave gray-bat colony has rebuilt to 300,000.

Disturbances need not be extreme to be fatal, for bats are very sensitive. Most North American bats use caves to hibernate, from September to April or May, and many also raise their young in them during summer. Bats reproduce at a slower rate than any other small mammal, with most females giving birth to just one pup each year. In winter even conscientious cave explorers can wake up hibernating bats. Each time a bat is awakened, it loses roughly 2 months' worth of its stored fat and thus may not survive until spring.

When nursing, mothers and pups cluster in huge colonies, warming the cave with their body heat. A disturbance often breaks the colony into smaller groups. Then the temperature drops, and the young may not grow fast enough to survive.

As their roosts are disturbed, bats are forced to move into fewer caves in greater and greater numbers, making them even more vulnerable to disaster. During the 1950's dozens of caves in Florida sheltered colonies of a few thousand bats each. I watched as one cave was buried beneath a town's new city dump and others were bulldozed shut by landowners worried about personal-injury lawsuits. One cave was opened to public exploration; another was commercialized.

By the 1980's the remaining bats were crammed into only a few caves, which were partly flooded and thus less disturbed by people. Those caves became death traps in the devastating flood caused by tropical storm Alberto in July 1994. About a quarter of a million bats drowned in just one cave.

Inexorably, bats are running out of space, funneled from natural habitat into artificial substitutes that are effective but risky, like abandoned mines. Shut down when their pay dirt played out or by hard economic times, hundreds of thousands

of these mines pit the U.S., especially in the West, the Great Lakes region, and the Northeast, as well as Canada and Mexico. For many bats, mines have become shelters of last resort. Roughly half of more than 6,000 mines recently surveyed showed signs of bat use. Ten percent of mines in the West contained important colonies; for mines in the North and East the figure is almost certainly higher.

While abandoned mines provide good shelter for bats, they pose hazards for people. Mines regarded as dangerous have long been boarded up or filled with earth by bulldozers, seldom with regard for any bats inside. Millions of bats, which create the largest colonies of any mammal, have already been buried by this practice or been forced to seek shelter elsewhere. This dilemma is becoming acute, because many States, spurred by human accidents in such mines, have stepped up the closure rate.

To protect both people and bats, over the past 5 years more than a hundred sturdy gates have been constructed at mine entrances, allowing bats to pass through but keeping people out. Millions of bats have been saved by these gates, often built jointly by BCI, mining companies, and government agencies. In fact, some closed mines previously occupied by bats have been reopened and gated. This happened near Altoona, PA, where a mine in Canoe Creek State Park now boast the State's largest hibernating bat colony, which includes five different species.

Perhaps BCI's best experience in helping to save an abandoned mine for bats came in the town of Iron Mountain, Michigan. In November 1992 local cave explorer Steve Smith had descended by rope into the 300-foot-deep vertical entrance of the Millie Hill Mine, scheduled to be closed within months. Where iron ore had once been excavated, he discovered the second largest hibernating population of bats in North America-nearly one million little brown and big brown bats. Steve immediately called BCI to help save them.

When I arrived in Iron Mountain, I sensed suspicion in the air. When Bob Doepker, a Michigan Department of Natural Resources biologist, and I telephoned city and mining officials, no one returned our calls. We were sure they feared an attack by aggressive environmentalists, so we set about trying to reassure the community. I arranged to speak to classes at two elementary schools and to introduce the children to live bats (I seldom travel without at least one for show-and-tell purposes).

The kids were immediately fascinated by the bats. I promised to show them even more if they would bring their parents to another talk I had arranged for the next night at the public library.

To everyone's surprise about 300 parents and children showed up. By the end of the evening minds were open, and bats had new friends. Businesses offered to donate materials, and volunteers offered their labor to build a heavy steel cage over the Millie Hill mine shaft. Now the people of Iron Mountain are very proud of their bat sanctuary.

Equally important, local mine inspectors are now cooperating to locate and protect other mines where bats live.

On the Federal level, last year BCI and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management jointly funded a partnership called the North American Bats and Mines Project. The goals: to educate landowners and land managers to survey for bats before mines are closed and, if important colonies are present, to construct more of those bat-friendly gates.

This is the kind of education BCI has always promoted. One of our earliest achievements was to persuade people to quit poisoning bats in Wisconsin buildings, keeping them out instead. This happened in the early 1980's, when I was curator of mammals at the Milwaukee Public Museum.

Milwaukee's phone book listed an entry under "Bats"-my number, often called by people alarmed by a bat encounter. One morning I took a call from a woman paralyzed with fear. She said she and her husband had spent the previous night barricaded in their home, blocking every possible entryway into the house against attacking bats that had nearly "gotten them."

I asked her to describe the bats. "Small and orange," she said. Hmmm. I quickly deduced that the winged creatures that had terrified the couple were not "attacking bats" but hundreds of monarch butterflies that had paused to rest in their yard during the fall migration.

On another occasion, a county park superintendent told me that four people had been attacked by bats in one of his parks. The victims were receiving rabies inoculations and were threatening to sue the county. When I investigated, the demon bats turned out to be a female screech owl guarding her nest low in a tree. When passersby came too close, she struck their heads from behind. This happened always at dusk, and the victims blamed their ambush on the bats they saw swooping nearby, rather than the unseen owl.

Avoiding controversy and promoting partnership have always been at the heart of BCI's philosophy, and it's usually worked. . . eventually. Bats are often much easier and less costly to protect than other animals. Many live in large groups in well-defined locations, such as caves, mines, and bridge crevices, where a little protection can go a long way.

Bats just need a little kind attention, but it's hard to come by. According to a recent University of Chicago study, the Federal Government spends nearly $5 million trying to save one Florida panther, $184,000 for each grizzly bear, more than $1.5 million per California condor-and less than $3 on an endangered gray bat. Given their ecological and economic value, bats are an especially good investment.

As BCI worked to raise public awareness in Milwaukee, a greater opportunity was unfolding a thousand miles to the south in Austin, TX. Spanning Town Lake on the Colorado River, Austin's downtown Congress Avenue Bridge was renovated in 1980. Many Mexican free-tailed bats had lost their caves in the area, and it didn't take them long to find the new crevices under the bridge just the right size to let them squeeze in.

There they snooze during the day, between 750,000 and 1.5 million of them, the largest urban bat colony in North America. At night they emerge to hunt insects, creating swirling skeins visible for miles around-a spectacle as grand as Carlsbad Cavern's famed New Mexico colony, which has declined to less than a million.

At first the people of Austin saw a nightmare instead of a spectacle. As the bats took wing, all the old bat bugaboos arose from the populace. Newspapers ran headlines like "Bat Colonies Sink Teeth Into City." People eagerly signed petitions demanding that the bats be exterminated, and the Texas Department of Transportation began research into ways to evict the bats.

To me the situation represented a tremendous opportunity. In 1986 I moved BCI to Austin and began trying to reduce fear with reason. Skeptics abounded. Upon our arrival a Texas magazine joshed us with a Bum Steer award. But as I introduced Austinites to their bats through lectures, talk shows, and audiovisual programs for schools, people quickly changed their minds.

For example, the Texas Department of Transportation has come full circle. After I spoke at a bridge designers conference, the department funded major research to design more bat-friendly bridges. "We have about six million bats already living in 59 Texas bridges," says structural engineer Mark J. Bloschock, "and we'll be building 15 to 20 new bridges a year that together will accommodate a million new bats." Now when the bats stream out of the bridge at dusk, it's cause for celebration. Awaiting the event, bat-watchers spread blankets on the riverbank; above it, res taurants are packed with onlookers. Curious tourists come from around the world to this self-proclaimed Bat Capital of America to view the bats. Outdoor parties feature bat detectors, electronic receivers that can be tuned to ultrasonic frequencies emitted by bats. When the detectors beep, guests scan the sky.

Some Austinites who feared the bats a decade ago are among BCI's members, now nearly 13,000 strong. Our projects have been fruitful. We bought Bracken Cave, 60 miles southwest of Austin, to protect 20 million Mexican free-tailed bats, the world's largest colony of bats. We sponsor workshops nationally to teach wildlife managers and conservationists how to protect bats. We also have developed partnerships with State and Federal agencies. We're working with Mexican officials to gain better protection for several species that winter in Mexico before migrating to the U.S. for the

summer.

We publish special bat-house plans for both backyard amateurs and professional biologists, many of whom participate in our North American Bat House Research Project. They share information and experiment with new designs and locations for the houses. Some individuals have attracted 2,000 to 10,000 bats apiece.

More than 10 years ago, when I was still in Milwaukee, an Oregon farmer named Tony Koch called me seeking information about bat houses. He had already reduced his need to use pesticides by building more than 800 birdhouses. He hoped to cut down the pesticides-and the insects-even more by attracting bats.

Tony built three bat houses. After 3 years, he finally found five little brown bats in one house. Then he began trying different kinds of wood, aged wood, and different locations. Now he has four bat houses of varying designs on his barn, nine nursery boxes inside the barn, and eight boxes on wooden posts around his fir trees. They are occupied by several thousand contented little brown bats.

Once Tony's corn crop was infested with corn earworms, with an average of one to four of those destructive moth larvae per ear. For the past several years he has had none. The farmer's friends have come home to roost.

Senator KEMPTHORNE. Mr. Chairman, thank you, and we appreciate whatever time you can devote to this. I will mention we've

held field hearings out in Idaho and Oregon, and again I was very delighted that Senator Chafee joined us for those hearings. During the August recess it is my intent that we will hold additional hearings throughout the United States, and again the chairman has indicated that he will join us for that.

So that's real dedication on his part.

Senator CHAFEE. Well, I must say, Mr. Chairman, I didn't consider it exactly extra arduous duty to go to Idaho. You've got a lovely State and you gave us a very, very interesting and constructive time there, and I'm sure also of the visits that we make in the August recess.

I'm so optimistic when we talk about the August recess-we're assuming there will be one.

(Laughter.]

Senator KEMPTHORNE. If not, there may be other endangered species around here.

I might note too that while we were on one of the field trips during those hearings, Senator Chafee was able to walk and see one of the dams and coming through one of the ladders, the fish ladders, was a wild steelhead stock, which is rare. But he was able to hold it, grab it with his bare hands-we have great pictures of it-and we just thank the agency that made that all possible.

Senator CHAFEE. Yes, Mr. Chairman, I wasn't exactly sure they didn't have this stored away somewhere just to wheel out just as we came through. That poor old steelhead has been through that dam, it's probably about every time outside when a so-called dignitary comes by I think he's the one they run through.

(Laughter.]

Senator KEMPTHORNE. Well, with that, we look forward to our first panel. Certainly, we have with us, of course, Mollie Beattie, who is the Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of Interior; Rolland Schmitten, the Assistant Administrator, National Marine Fisheries Service in the Department of Commerce two individuals that I have the utmost respect for with the tough assignments that you have that you have been tackling, and I just appreciate the working relationship that we have. So I look forward to your testimony this morning, and your formal opening statements will certainly be made part of the record, but I look forward to any comments that you would like to make now. So, Madam Director.

STATEMENT OF MOLLIE BEATTIE, DIRECTOR, FISH AND
WILDLIFE SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF INTERIOR

Ms. BEATTIE. Thank you, Senator. It is a great privilege to come and testify today. I compliment you on a thorough and balanced hearing this morning. I'm always happy also to be part of what we call now the Rollie and Mollie show.

[Laughter.]

Ms. BEATTIE. There was much that the Fish and Wildlife Service can agree on with your opening comments, Senators, particularly that recovery is really the soul and the purpose, obviously, of the Endangered Species Act. Within recovery we really think of there being two goals-one is short-term and one is long-term.

The short-term goal is to prevent extinction. It is very hard to tell in a statistical way how well we have done at that, but we can say that we have about 960 species, plants and animals, on the endangered species list at this time, and we certainly within that number, without knowing for how many, can take credit as Americans for having saved a good proportion from extinction.

The long-term goal, of course, is to recover those species. Of the roughly 960 species, we estimate that about 200 are currently stable or increasing, which means that at least for that 200 we have pulled them one step back from extinction.

The stark reality of recovery is that quick comebacks will be rare. If we stop and think that it has taken 100 or 200 years of balancing effectively-in other words, whenever a choice was to be made between the conservation of habitat and the species in them or economic development, for many species we have chosen economic development. To the extent that we have 10, 5, 2 or 1 percent of their natural range left, it is clear that reversing that pattern of over 100 or 200 years, at a time when the population of this country has doubled in a few short decades is quite a challenge. It involves enormous amounts of quick, scientific research; it involves partnerships with all jurisdictions, be they other Federal agencies, States, private landowners, tribes and corporations; it involves a great deal of research and public comments; and most of all, it involves turning around a very precipitous decline, a trend that is heading toward extinction in a short period of time.

One good comparison relative to the difficulty of quick turnarounds is that of 106 species that were listed at the time the ESA was passed 22 years, 58 percent of those are now recovering. But of the species listed just since 1993, only 6 percent have begun the recovery efforts and the journey back from extinction, so I think that shows that this is an arduous task. We, of course, would agree that there are many ways that the recovery process can be improved. The Senators have touched on some of those. We, for instance, would agree that once the numerical and habitat conservation goals and regulatory protection goals have been met for a species, they should be relatively automatically delisted to speed up that process. Right now the delisting process is the reverse of the listing process, which is proposals, and research and public comment. If we have set a recovery trend that sets bench marks, we should abide by them and really speed up the delisting and what we call the uplisting process, which is moving species from the endangered list to the threatened list, which has recently happened with our bald eagle.

I would actually like to point out, however, that the efforts to improve recovery would be severely hampered by the budget cuts assigned by the House for the 1996 budget. In fact, if you look at the criticisms of the Endangered Species Act, everything from the science and we would defend ourselves hard from those criticisms, but, at any rate, they exist-criticism of the science to problems with recovery to not enough effort to avoid listing. Each of those items coming over in the House version of the 1996 budget has been either seriously debilitated or completely unfunded.

Successful recovery efforts depend on acting early, working with partners and maintaining an ongoing commitment to the effort.