Richard Pombo: “one of the worst possible things we could do to the Endangered Species Act is put in some arbitrary things and say if…”

“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.”