Richard Pombo

yes; that is correct. It was in southern California. It was a fly that was listed as endangered, and the result of that was that we had a hospital delayed because of that.

I have a list from an environmental impact statement for the Sacramento River system control plan which listed the following Federal laws which must be complied with before the levee repairs could begin: National Historic Preservation Act…

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…

I did see the article that they considered it a national treasure and that it was worth delaying the opening of a hospital for several months and the spending of several hundred thousand dollars per fly by the taxpayers of Riverside County.

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…

I am not talking about the roads that are built already. I am not talking about the roads in existence, not the roads that we have already built. We are talking about the roads that the gentleman wants to stop us from building. How are we…

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 money that is coming in from private industry, that is creating thousands of jobs, regardless of the efforts of some of my friends on the other side of the aisle, they still have some timber jobs, that if that money does not come in…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

The gentleman is telling me that all of the money that goes to the schools and fire suppression and everything else is still going to be paid for by the taxpayer?

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…

I rise in support of H.R. 848, legislation to increase the authorization ceiling for construction of a by-pass road around Chickamauga-Chattanooga National Military Park. In 1890, Congress designated the Chickamauga-Chattanooga National…

apparently the White House is at it again. This time they raided the confidential FBI files of Republican officials, including former Secretary of State James Baker. Let me just read from the AP story about this incident: But among the…

Under current law, Mr. Speaker, they will not allow you to even enhance the current population of endangered species on your property.

As chairman of the task force, I had the opportunity to take the task force to your district to hold a hearing earlier last year. One of the good fortunes that we had while we were in your district is we had the opportunity to visit a…

So if the golden-checked warbler were truly an endangered species and we were truly trying to recover that species, is not the Endangered Species Act working in the exact opposite direction? Is it not giving people the perverse incentive…

along the same lines with this particular lady, I had the opportunity to hear her testimony before the endangered species task force. One of the things that she brought up at that time, and I thought it was very interesting, was that this…

Is it his opinion that if we went to an incentive-based system that operated where the individuals were rewarded for their stewardship or rewarded for being good stewards of the lands and, quite frankly, had more of an impact on what…

Absolutely, and it does have to be a biologist. It can be a college student doing their senior thesis on the disappearance.

The vast majority of those are insects that they have on the species list. That is one of the major reasons why it is so critical that the Endangered Species Act be reauthorized and reformed in doing so. Mr. Speaker, if they were to…

Current law does not require them to use good science. If he went out and did a biological study on his black bear in Louisiana, and he wanted to print that in a scientific magazine, it would have to stand up to peer review before they…