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particular, the ecosystem plan will initiate the discussions necessary to integrate the two basins and their many recovery plans into one integrated process. He believes that the basin very much needs to have a technical discussion and overall debate on where we need to go basinwide in recovery and hopefully these papers will provide the mechanisms for a forum to begin discussing these issues. A short discussion followed in which the background of the Council's position that integrated plans should be advanced and the whole recovery effort should be integrated over the system was reviewed. This was affirmed by the Council and emphasized to the Fish & Wildlife Service. LOWER BASIN MULTI-SPECIES CONSERVATION PLAN The subject was presented to Council by Mr. John Sjoberg (NV) and Mr. Joe Janisch (AZ). The Lower Basin Multi-Species Conservation Plan is being developed through a multi-agency effort of FWS, the State Wildlife Agencies of the three lower basin states, as well as the State Water Development and Irrigation interests of the three lower basin states. Their intent is to develop an intensive -- multi species program to aid recovery of habitat and fish not only those currently listed as endangered, but those considered candidates for listing, while at the same time, allowing for orderly development of the river's resources. The original partners have tried to invite other agencies of the Department of Interior and other governmental stakeholders', lower basin environmental organizations, and basin tribes. Discussions have been ongoing for the past year and are continuing in what was originally planned to be a three year period to develop the plan prior to its implementation. To date, there has not been any real progress in development of a plan beyond the agreement to work together, because the group is expecting results from the USBR environmental assessment on lower basin operations. Planning will be underway, however, in anticipation of the assessment. Recent developments have moved efforts away from these basic objectives, as several environmental organizations filed 60 day notices of intent to sue the FWS, that the program violated some sections of the Endangered Species Act. Recent efforts are aimed at trying to get these issues resolved. Basically, environmental groups want to eliminate the Memorandum of Understanding under which the present group is operating and go back to the beginning of the process. Recent efforts to resolve the problem have been along lines of a Memorandum of Clarification which would define terms in the original Memorandum of Agreement. This 12