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•. -. 3 For instance, the nature of the fish themselves seems to be thoroughly misunderstood. I'm not going to stand r to tell ou that these are pretty fish. The a era Government can put a shuttle in space, it can won arrange a face-lift for any fish. On the other hand, however, I am appalled when I see an article like the editorial which appeared in a local newspaper stating that these fish are so tiny and so obscure that they in most cases cannot be seen by the ordinary viewer. And that they exist only in deep canyons of the Upper Colorado in places that are so remote as to be totally inaccessible by man. That's simply not the case. These are sizeable fish and in some cases quite accessible. But this illustrates well some of the misunderstanding about the issues and about the requirements of law under the'Endangered Species Act -- and the amount of flexibility that some people believe the Federal Government has. It is no secret that when the Congress of these United States passed the Endangered Species Act into law, most of our lawmakers were concerned about the plight of such species as our national symbol, the bald eagle, or dramatic creatures like the peregrine falcon or California condor. Big stuff. Critters most people could relate to and have some real concern About. But we all know what happened. Along came things like the snail darter and the Furbish lousewort, and a lot of folks had a good laugh, and a few folks didn't. They were having a major headache because some strange little species that maybe a dozen university professors had ever heard of before was now holding up a big Federally funded project. Well, Congress amended the Endangered Species Act and made it somewhat more flexible. But, in fact, it is still a little rigid in some cases, and its legal processes sometimes seem like molasses on a January morning. But the Endangered Species Act is a Federal law. It is still the_law of th;? land. You can make some jokes about it but you can't scoff at it and you can t-ignore it. It must be obeyed, as Tong as it is a law. And as long as it is, my job is to be sure that it is applied fa'rii _9rQperly. I'll promise you this: we are making?cery effort to see that this pc?wPrfu7 1a1v is used ro erl a that ' t another Lega-LAaaeuver--in-a Pro ectioni bag a f +r?rJrs -- it'c not that wav It's the law, and we will not allow it to be used frivolously or cynically, but we use it when we must, when we know it is the proper thing to do, when the intent of Congress is clear. For instance, the number of jeopardy opinions issued under the Endangered Species Act since 1981 has been rather limited. But jeopardy opinions, in fact, have always been pretty rare, making up only a small percent of the Fish and Wildlife Service Endangered Species Act opinions. More often than not, development can proceed in accord with biolo ical needs. I note this to emphasi-ze that the goal of the Fish and Wildlife Service is to cooperate productively with development, even though it might not always seem that way to you.