Norman D. Dicks: “I take back my time. The gentleman knows fully if they have a species on their property, it is their responsibility.…”

“I take back my time. The gentleman knows fully if they have a species on their property, it is their responsibility. They do not have to do it, but if they do not do it, they do not get an incidental take permit. If they want to risk taking a species without an incidental take permit, then they will violate the Endangered Species Act. The way to do it is to go in and enter into an agreement. Now, in many cases, small landowners are given, as a matter of course, an incidental take permit. It is the large landowner that is asked to do the multispecies HCP. In this case, the company involved did not negotiate in good faith to get a multispecies HCP. If they had done that and they were willing to do that on all the lands that they own in this area that the gentleman's amendment affects, I am told by the Fish and Wildlife Service that they would have bent over backwards to try to enter into such an agreement. The facts are that they came in and made it very clear from the very first instant that what they wanted to do was to file a lawsuit that would raise the issue of a constitutional taking. That is, in fact, what they did. And in fact the Federal judge, Judge Rothstein, is the one who directed the Fish and Wildlife Service to designate critical habitat. In this instance, 78 percent of the critical habitat was on Federal lands, and only 1 percent was on the private lands.”