our tribe had very little involvement with the Act or its implementation until recent years. Initially, we viewed the challenges by environmental groups and the regulatory actions of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regarding endangered species as a total hypocrisy. Those who sought to impose the ESA upon our tribe and our aboriginal lands made their challenges from cities where they had long ago exterminated native animals, plants and had erected cities of concrete and steel, where prairies, wetlands and other wildlife habitat once existed. The species found on our reservation that are listed as endangered are rare because there are few healthy habitats elsewhere. Our reservation is home to many of these plants and animals because we have managed our land well. In our Apache tradition, we do not manage our lands for the benefit of a particular species. We strive to protect the land and all the life form that it supports. Our homeland is too vast to manage for just one species. Our reservation traverses five life zones from Upper Sonoran to Sub-Alpine Forests. The diversity of our land provides habitat for a wide variety of plants and animals, and each is important to us. The pressures of environmentalists and the Ecological Services Branch of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to manage our land for a single species is a contradiction to our view of life. Senator KEMPTHORNE. Ms. DeHose, if you could just begin to summarize your final comments. We'll make all of your written comments part of the record. I appreciate, that's difficult when you're in this setting. But again, you've given us very thoughtful comments, and I'd just like to have you summarize perhaps from your own personal perspective. MS. DEHOSE. All right. In the Endangered Species Act, the law itself, we feel as a tribe, we have for a long time managed our lands in a harmonious way, in being sensitive to the natural environment. We feel that the Endangered Species Act does not apply to tribes, and therefore, it should be the trust responsibility of the U.S. Government. If the tribe is included in the Endangered Species Act, there should also be a provision in which there are funds available so that we can comply with the Act. I wish I had more time to say all of this. Senator KEMPTHORNE. There will be a round of questions where we can go into further detail. But again, I appreciated the sensitivity of your comments and the heritage that you have. So thank you. We now have two representatives from the State of Montana. I think it's worth noting, a Republican and a Democrat. Senator Baucus, if you would like to make any comments? Senator BAUCUS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We are very proud of Dick Knox and Emily Swanson. Dick and Emily took on the task of trying to resolve various interests in our State, and trying to put together a common solution, an agreedupon solution and approach to Endangered Species Act issues in Montana. They've worked long and hard at it, they've had many, meetings all across the State, many, many hours, and they've done, frankly, what has to be done, namely just work very hard, ignore the rhetoric, forget the emotion of the issue, just roll up the sleeves and get the job done. They've done a bang-up job. We're all very proud of our legislators. All of us in Montana are particularly proud of Dick and Emily. That's no idle statement, Mr. Chairman. They've done a very, very good job, and they're very, very highly respected in our State. Senator KEMPTHORNE. Well, we welcome both of you. Representative Swanson, any comments you would have, Representative Knox. STATEMENT OF DICK KNOX, STATE REPRESENTATIVE, WINIFRED, MT Mr. KNOX. Mr. Chairman, with your permission, Representative Swanson and I will divide up our testimony. Senator KEMPTHORNE. All right, then we're going to make sure we give you the full 5 minutes. Mr. KNOX. Thank you very much. Senator KEMPTHORNE. We've started the clock. Mr. KNOX. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on behalf of the Montana Endangered Species Reauthorization Committee. I and Representative Emily Swanson have for the past 18 months co-chaired a committee to find common ground among a wide variety of Montana citizens about how to reform the Endangered Species Act. I'm a Republican State legislator. I ranch with my extended family outside of Winifred, MT, in a remote part of the State of Montana. Emily Swanson is a Democratic State legislator from a university town, and is a long-time conservationist. Although the two of us vote quite differently on many issues, we respect one another's willingness to find where we can agree on contentious problems. Early in 1994, Representative Swanson and I, in response to congressional activity on the ESA, and with the urging of Senator Baucus, agreed to convene a group of Montanans from all points of view, evenly balanced, to discuss and find where we could agree on necessary changes to the Act. We each invited nine people from our side of the issue. I should point out that I invited people from the resource side of the spectrum, Representative Swanson invited people from the environmental side of the spectrum. We wanted Montanans who represented both sides of the political aisle and who represented economic interests as well as environmental interests. Ranching, farming, timber, mining, wilderness, wildlife, and recreation were all represented. We weren't experts and we weren't paid staff, just Montanans who live on the land and have a willingness to accommodate one another's interests and seek agreement, Montanans who want to see the ESA work. Each member of the committee participated in their own time and at their own expense, not representing an organization. The committee included both legislators and citizens and worked with technical advice from public, private, and non-profit experts. With facilitation by the Montana Consensus Council, over 18 months, we came to agreement on a set of guiding principles we think should continue to be incorporated in the Act. And a set of suggested improvements, which are quite general, but give us a framework within which to respond to various pieces of proposed legislation. We believe strongly that our process based on bringing all parties to the table and seeking consensus is the best way to find workable solutions to complex and very contentious problems. We've produced a status report of our work in preparation for responding to legislation proposed by this Congress. The status report is submitted as part of our testimony. Senator KEMPTHORNE. Very good, thank you. Representative Swanson. STATEMENT OF EMILY SWANSON, STATE REPRESENTATIVE, BOZEMAN, MT Ms. SWANSON. Mr. Chairman, thank you. I will just pick up from where Representative Knox left off, and go on a little bit into the substance of what we discussed as a committee. Most basically, our committee supports the findings, purposes and policy of the ESA outlined in section 2. We do believe that the intent of the Act, of keeping species from extinction, is worthwhile. Yet we recognize that the Act can be improved. There are significant areas of the Act which don't work well on the ground. Two areas we quickly agreed on for reform were one, the level of State involvement, and two, the delisting criteria and processes. We agreed that more local control over implementation of the Act would help, and that delisting needs clearer definition, so it can take place for more species and provide a degree of certainty to the Act that is now missing. For the purposes of this testimony, we're limiting our comments to those pertinent to State involvement. We agreed on several recommendations around State involvement. Our recommendations are based on the need to build sound relationships with landowners whose land has critical habitat, habitat critical to threatened or endangered species. With so many species residing on private land, and with listing of the species potentially so restrictive, landowners are rightfully fearful of government intrusion. Due to staffing constraints, there are few Federal agents on the ground working one on one with landowners. We felt that State wildlife agencies, which characteristically have more field staff, have a chance of better personal relationships with local land owners. In Montana, State fish and game field staff frequently have personal relationships and deep personal knowledge of the wildlife, the land and the people living on it. Better on the ground information is available to field staff close to the landowners. We felt, therefore, that States should have, and I say opportunities here, because it was interesting to me to hear Secretary Babbitt say that Arizona wasn't at all interested in this. But we feel in Montana at least that States should have the opportunities to provide more meaningful input on listing and delisting determinations, should have opportunities to provide more meaningful input on designating critical habitat, should have greater opportunity to assume the lead, actually the lead and primacy in cooperation with other appropriate entities, in developing and implementing recovery plans, and should have adequate Federal funding to assist States in implementing ESA priorities, since they are national priorities. States have great potential for making the Act work more efficiently and effectively. Over the long term, it's vital that we turn the Act from crisis management to preventive management, with more local control. I'll stop there. Thank you. Senator KEMPTHORNE. All right, thank you. Senator BAUCUS. Mr. Chairman, I apologize for the interruption here, there is a development on the floor which I must attend to. The Regulatory Reform Bill is on the floor, as you know, and there is now an amendment pending to delete section 628, that's the Superfund provisions in regulatory reform. I'm very much in favor of the deletion, it dramatically affects our State of Montana. All apologies to you, Mr. Chairman, and to you, Dick and Emily, I feel constrained to go over. It has to be done. Senator KEMPTHORNE. Senator Baucus, thank you very much. Mr. Schmidt, I would like to ask you to make your comments now. STATEMENT OF DAVID R. SCHMIDT, COMMISSIONER, LINN COUNTY, OR Mr. SCHMIDT. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. My name is Dave Schmidt, I'm a commissioner from Linn County, OR, here representing the National Association of Counties as the chairman of its Public Lands Steering Committee. I do appreciate having the opportunity to be here today to offer a national county perspective on needed changes to the Endangered Species Act. NACO has taken a moderate approach in its review of the ESA, with the purposes of improving the existing Act, rather than proposing a wholesale rewriting of its provisions. These changes have been developed after more than a review by the Public Lands Steering Committee and its various components. We do have seven points in the written material that's submitted to this committee. In the interest of time, I'm not going to re-read those points, but go on into a little bit of discussion about some of those points. NAČO believes it is in everyone's best interests and in the best interests of species not to get to the place where we have to list a species under the ESA, if possible. That is, every effort should be made to conserve habitat and take appropriate actions to avoid implementation of the stringent requirements of the Act. We believe that providing incentives for potentially affected public and private property owners to enter into conservation agreements with the Secretary of the Interior may lead to better overall coordination and management of the habitat for multiple species, and provide for a longer term solution that has a greater level of public acceptance than a habitat conservation plan imposed on the populace by Federal officials. These incentives could be, of course, monetary. More importantly perhaps, regulatory relief, tax credits, land exchanges, or any other number of valued processes. We believe this voluntary approach is also more likely to provide the flexibility to fit the specific conditions of the site and the landowners' goals while providing a level of protection not contemplated by the ESA today. We also understand the fiscal realities of today's budget situation, and believe we must prioritize the money and time invested among species to get the best return for our investment in their conservation. There is simply not enough money to do it all. Indeed, some species will probably be lost regardless of how much money is spent on their recovery. Voluntary agreements among the various stakeholders can certainly help stretch those conservation dollars. Throughout the current ESA, local governments are given virtually no role to play in the decisionmaking process, the planning process, or the implementation of the ESA, except to the extent Federal officials or their State partners dictate terms and conditions to local officials. Now, not every county in the Nation is prepared to immediately participate in all aspects of the ESA process. But many do have a significant body of expertise that has been woefully underutilized, because the Act does not require Federal officials to even consult local governments, let alone ask them to substantially participate in implementing the Act. NACO advocates involving affected local governments and their expertise whenever possible. Land use planning decisions, for an example, are primarily a function of local government. Citizens are familiar, by and large, comfortable with local processes for planning and decisionmaking. Most affected citizens want to have input into the planning of designations affecting their lives and livelihood. They believe local officials are more likely to represent their interests than Federal bureaucrats. We also believe that local decisionmakers can provide the flexibility and timely responses necessary to make the Act work better. Second, local governments may be able to make decisions or help make decisions regarding habitat outside the core review area that may enhance species conservation and recovery. While species conservation and habitat protection are important goals, we must understand and more fully take into account the human implications of actions taken pursuant to the Act. We believe that too often in the past, Federal officials have decided to take certain actions to protect habitat with a view that the humans. affected by those actions will just have to accept them, like it or not. And this approach has generated a good deal of opposition to the Act, if not its intended goals. We believe that the economic, social and cultural aspects of human activity must be given greater weight in the post-listing decisions making processes of the Act. We acknowledge that whether a species is threatened or endangered is a matter of biological science. But what is done to address that status has implications in a much broader arena. Again, we are not going to be able to save them all. We will have to be prepared to perform species triage, and accept the fact that |