Richard Pombo

If the director of the National Biological Survey is giving me bad information, I apologize.

When we started getting into this whole argument about what we did with NSB, the National Biological Survey, in maintaining the science function, I was told as we passed on the House floor last year, there was a ban on volunteers, that the…

Do you think that maybe small property owners may be hurt by losing 20 percent of their property?

The main reason why I came down here is because you and I have discussed this issue for a number of years about what to do. You have always said that you want to help, that you do want to protect people's private property and that that is…

The study on the 10,000 was based on, if it is the same study I saw, was based on one island and what happened on that one island and extrapolated throughout the entire country.

I originally came down here to ask you one thing, and as you continued, there is something else I have to ask you. You said that we had one species a year for a million years.

So it would not bust budgets and Mr. Dye would not be able to back his U-Haul trailer up to the U.S. Treasury to take money because the U.S. Agency would be forced to be responsible for the first time in 40 years?

If this legislation were to pass and in a few months when it is law, would Fish and Wildlife act in the same way and go out and just designate everything that they see as potential habitat and gain control of it? Or would they prioritize…

In one of your examples, you talked about, I believe it was Mr. Dye, who had what would be suitable habitat or potential habitat for an endangered species, and they want to restrict the use of his property, based on the fact that if an…

It was combining. This was my concern, combining, commingling, official money with outside money, and that was my concern, and that is why I signed onto the letter.

Yes. Those are current roads, currently being used for access by those property owners. This bill would prohibit the use of those roads.

Yes, they are. All of the shiny dots currently represent a section of property which is privately owned; a section of property being 640 acres, or 1 square mile.

I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, in my statement I did not say that we were not allowing the grazing, the mining, the private property owners, the hiking, the rock collecting and such to continue, because the bill does…