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court action, the listing of species for purposes of protection under the Endangered Species Act. That is how the Northern spotted owl got on the list. I will give you an interesting historical footnote. The spotted owl found a place on the list as a result of a petition filed by three people living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, calling themselves Green World. That is what launched the decade long and still far from resolved debate over the impact of listing the spotted owl on forestry practices in the northwest. Three people in Cambridge. The recovery process is the second major element that I would like to note. In fact, in my judgement that is the linch pin of the Endangered Species Act. Not the consultation process [the third major element], which everyone focuses on, and which requires consultation between federal action agencies, like the Bureau of Reclamation and federal consulting agencies, like the Fish and Wildlife Service, and requires that action agencies not take any action that is likely to jeopardize listed species. That process receives all the focus. However, the real guts of the Endangered Species Act is, and should be, the recovery process because the goal of listing a species in the first place is to get it off the list. The goal is to pull together the techniques, the necessary actions that are designed to get the species off the list and to remove the need for the protection. It is the recovery process, in my judgement, that has not gotten adequate attention, or funding, or staffing. That is unfortunate, because it is the solution side of the Endangered Species Act. It is where the effort should be made. The third element, as mentioned, is the consultation process required by Section 7 of the Act. The teeth in this provision is the command that federal agencies not take any "action" such as building a dam, or issuing a permit -- that is likely to "jeopardize" a listed species. The term "jeopardize" is defined by Department of Interior regulations to mean an action that would appreciably diminish the likelihood that the species would survive and recover in the wild. The fourth major element of the act is, of course, the takings prohibitions. In contrast with the Section 7, Consultation/No Jeopardy process, which applies to federal agency actions, the takings prohibition applies to everyone; private, public, state, tribal, everyone is subject to the prohibition on harming and harassing, which are terms defined by regulation, listed species. As you all probably know, the definition of harm under the takings prohibition has been expanded, first by regulatory definition, and second by the gloss put on the regulations by the courts, specifically, the ninth circuit in the Pallila case, out of Hawaii, and the tenth circuit in the Red Cockaded Woodpecker case, out of Texas. The taking prohibition is a very substantial and broad scale prohibition. It is backed up with criminal enforcement. We are seeing criminal indictments in the northwest for cutting owl forests, on private land. It is a very. potent weapon in the hands of the federal government. The fifth major element of the Endangered Species Act is the exemption process. I recently completed a tour of duty as the Fish and Wildlife Service's special counsel in the sp'otted owl exemption proceedings involving 44 BLM timber sales. I have been involved in the other two exemption proceedings on Tellico and Grayrock's Dam. Therefore, I have the rather unlikely distinction of being the only lawyer in the world that has been involved in all three exemption 66