Richard Pombo

Mr. POMBO

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Montana [Mr. Hill].

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\3/4\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Missouri [Mrs. Emerson].

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Peterson].

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California [Mr. Condit].

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 10 seconds to the gentleman from Alaska [Mr. Young].

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, in conclusion on the debate, I would just like to say that the point is we have drafted a bill which is designed to allow routine maintenance and operation of the levee system in California. That is what it is designed to do. We have heard a lot of statements that have been made here today which are factually untrue. It does not gut the Endangered Species Act, it does not blow a hole in the Endangered Species Act; none of that is true. What it does is it allows regular routine maintenance of the levee system to happen on a timely basis. That is what it allows. Mr. Chairman, the entire levee system was built to protect peoples' lives and property. Why do our colleagues find it so difficult to put that as a priority of the levee system? Is it so difficult for them to place people as the No. 1 priority of our levee system, of our flood control system? Mr. Chairman, this is a simple bill that has a targeted, very narrow problem that we are trying to correct. That is what we are after at this time. All of the stuff we keep hearing from the minority really is just an effort to block passing on control to the local district managers and giving them the opportunity to manage their levee system.

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, in an effort to reach a consensus on this bill we have worked long and hard. I have met with Members of the minority repeatedly, I have met with Members of my own party who had concerns repeatedly. We have narrowed the bill substantially from the way it was first introduced. But as of last night, or as of yesterday, there were still concerns that maybe the bill could be interpreted to be more broad than the intention. Because of that and in consultation with the gentleman from California [Mr. Campbell] a decision was made that we would add additional language to the bill which would narrow the scope and meet his concerns. Having said that, I yield to the gentleman from California [Mr. Campbell].

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Tauzin]. (Mr. TAUZIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. POMBO

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the bill and I think for the very reasons that were just outlined by my colleague. These designations are called honorary, something that just bestows an honorary status on sites in America and yet they are extremely important. This is ranked as an environmental vote. They are extremely important. We heard my other colleague say that these are used to stop mining, timber, grazing. For the very reasons that you guys have outlined is the exact reason why Congress should have oversight over this.

Mr. POMBO

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I too will be brief. This amendment has passed the House on several previous occasions. As little as a few weeks ago this amendment passed the House. This is an issue of fairness. In our universities and colleges across the country, if Federal tax dollars are good enough to put into those universities, then they should not deny ROTC on their campuses or recruiters entrance onto those campuses. I think in this new age of political correctness at times we have overstepped our bounds, and this is one instance where many of our universities and colleges have truly overstepped their bounds. They have forced ROTC students off campus, they are forcing recruiters off campus, and at the same time they have their hand out for Federal grants and Federal research dollars, and I believe that that is unfair. I believe that this amendment is one way of curing that problem and it is something that is much needed in our country today, and I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time and for bringing up this amendment.

Mr. POMBO

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, one of the worst possible things we could do to the Endangered Species Act is put in some arbitrary things and say if you have 5 acres or less, you are exempted from that. Again, in looking at the land patterns in northern California, the brown and the purple are publicly owned lands. They are either owned by the Federal or the State government. We can look at this and tell that there is an abundance of Federal- and State-owned lands, publicly owned lands. The gentleman keeps talking about the Headwaters Forest and the great redwoods. It should be pointed out that we also have the Redwood National Park just a few miles from there that is already federally owned and has fallen into disrepair, like most Federal land. I would like to quote one thing from the Defenders of Wildlife again in their thing that they sent out on this. They said that unlike other sea birds with nests in the sand, the marbled murrelet nests in branches 150 feet above the pine needle forest, in the column of trees. This is the property we are talking about, the private property. You would have a heck of a time finding that type of habitat that they insist they need for this bird.

Mr. POMBO. If you want to use your property, you have to go to the Federal Government and get permission to use your property, or risk being taken under the Endangered Species Act and being prosecuted for taking an endangered species. You must go to the Federal Government to use your property. So, fine. You do not have to go to the Federal Government, unless you want to use your property. Now, under the marbled murrelet critical habitat listing it says they need 150-foot-tall trees. This is part of the private property that was so necessary to include under the Endangered Species Act to protect the threatened marbled murrelet, this property right here. You can tell that it is not a forest, it is not populated with 150-foot-high trees, and yet they insist that it must be protected. This is about private property rights. That is what this debate is all about, and that is what we must protect.

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, yes, it is true that this debate really is not about the Endangered Species Act. I wish we were debating the Endangered Species Act on this floor today, but we are not. We are debating about whether or not we should protect the private property rights of these few people. What it really comes down to is that, yes, the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Dicks] is correct about one thing. When your property is designated as critical habitat, and it is private property, it is not immediately affected under the law, unless you want to use it. If you want to use it for anything, you have to go to the Federal Government to get permission to use it.

Mr. POMBO. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, I have supported HCPs. As the gentleman is well aware, in my endangered species reform bill. We strengthened the HCP process so it would be capable of establishing HCPs that would actually work. My colleague, the gentleman from southern California [Mr. Brown], was down here before and he talked about the HCP process they established in southern California, which was a very painful and very expensive process that took years to come up with, and has shown everything that was wrong with the current Endangered Species Act in terms of an HCP. Again, the problem is not the major property owners. The problem is not the larger developers. The problem is the small people, the individual property owners that do not have the ability to do that.

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. We keep hearing about the magical, mystical HCP process. I guess if you own 400,000 acres in one block, it is much easier to come up with an HCP which will work, because you are allowed to rotate your cutting throughout the entire parcel. Unfortunately for most small property owners, that is not an option. It is not available to you. You do not have the attorneys, you do not have the accountants, you do not have the biologists. You do not have the ability to adopt that kind of plan. I know the gentleman from Washington has worked very hard on HCP.

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. POMBO. Reclaiming my time, I believe that the gentleman points out that the portion of this private property that was supposedly the ancient forest, the headwaters, redwood, the big redwood trees, is specifically exempted from the amendment that was adopted in committee. We have been talking about that on and off during this debate. But it was specifically exempted in committee. Here we go again. I think that this debate has been very, very instructive. It really does outline what the debate has been over the Endangered Species Act over the past several years. That is what we want to use as the Endangered Species Act, which is supposed to protect fish and wildlife from becoming extinct. We want to use that to accomplish other goals. We have heard that we wanted to use it to accomplish something that the fishing industry wants. But more importantly, we have heard it said that we want to use the Endangered Species Act to punish this particular company, that we want to go after this company and punish them for whatever transgressions they have committed over the years, whatever it is, real or imagined that they may have done. We want to use the Endangered Species Act to achieve that goal. This entire listing of putting the marbled murrelet as threatened has been politically driven from the very beginning. I would like to read one thing here out of something that the Defenders of Wildlife has sent out, and my colleagues on the other side have used this extensively in their prepared floor statements. It says the marbled murrelets population in California, believed to have been about 60,000, is now estimated to be between 2,000 and 5,000 individuals. One of the problems on this listing was the fact that Fish and Wildlife could not count the marbled murrelets. They had a real tough time counting them. They could not find the nests. They resorted to trying to count them as they would go out into the ocean to feed. They had a real tough time counting them. Yet today it is presented as fact that at one time, sometime in ancient history, we had 60,000 marbled murrelets in northern California because the Defenders of Wildlife put it in their piece of paper that they sent out. Even though they cannot count them today, in today's time they cannot count them, they have a tough time finding them, but somehow it is presented as fact that at some point they had that number. Furthermore, this map here that I would like to bring to my colleagues' attention points out the land patterns in northern California, in this one particular section. The brown and purple areas represent publicly owned lands. We can see that the vast majority of this area is publicly owned. There is no doubt about it. But they went in here to this area and picked out one particular section of ground that they were going to go after, which just happens to be the land that is predominantly owned by one timber company. It also involves nine other private property owners, nine other small individuals, but they went after that one particular piece of land to further their agenda of trying to punish this one person. They have been trying for years to get this piece of property. They were never able to get it through legislation, through buying it, through anything that they ever tried. So they resorted to the Federal Government's trump card, the Endangered Species Act. You find an endangered species, you get it on the list, somehow, some way, even if you have to use trumped up science to do it, even if you have to make things up, you get it on the list and then you go after the property, because that is the one thing that you can do, is to use the Endangered Species Act. Unfortunately, my time has expired.

Mr. POMBO. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. POMBO

Mr. POMBO. Reclaiming my time, in conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I would just like to say that this is nothing more than furthering the agenda of locking up our public lands, locking them up to using them for any resources extraction, as well as locking them up so that the American public does not have an opportunity to enjoy our public lands. That is all it is. It is furthering an extremist agenda.

Mr. POMBO. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. POMBO. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. POMBO. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, the gentleman is saying that he does not want them to do this.