Norman D. Dicks: “If I were Mr. Hurwitz, I would be working with the Fish and Wildlife Service to do a multispecies habitat conservation…”

“If I were Mr. Hurwitz, I would be working with the Fish and Wildlife Service to do a multispecies habitat conservation plan like Murray Pacific, Simpson, Weyerhaeuser, and other people are doing in order to have a negotiated settlement of this issue so that he can get an incidental take permit and we can protect the owls and the murrelets. The only problem here for the other people, by the way, there is a notion here that when you have a designation of critical habitat, you cannot do anything on your private lands. That is not accurate. You can go in and continue to log, but you cannot go in and take one of the species. If you are going to take a species, then you have got to get a habitat conservation plan, which is completely understandable. So there is a way for Mr. Hurwitz to proceed, but he chooses not to because he wants to bring lawsuits saying that this whole process is a constitutional taking of his property. I guarantee I will work with any of the people that are here from the Congressman's district, with the people in the Fish and Wildlife Service who are doing HCP's to see if we can get them taken care of.”