Resources Chairman James V. Hansen's Remarks for 02-16-02 Grand Island, NE Hearing

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matter that flows desired by the Service decrease habitat for whooping cranes in every bridge segment but two by making the water too deep. Another example is the piping plover. The only place that piping plovers have nested west of Columbus in the last 10 years is on sandpits created by the gravel industry, even though hundreds of natural sandbars exist. Yet the Service has proposed critical habitat for this bird throughout this entire reach — specifically excluding; the only areas the birds use, the sand pits. Clearly the Service has an agenda other than increasing the number of birds. In these examples the Service has consistently and boldly ignored the research and data provided by those who work in the field with this river and these species in favor of reading their own internal "compiled in the office" reports and citing themselves as the "best available" science. I always enjoy the stories I hear regarding the Service's quote "experts, who were taken to Lake McConaughy to see plover because they had never seen them before — and did not recognize them — even though they had expounded on them for years. Or about the individual who commented for several years on habitat management at a site and had never seen it, and upon that experience exclaimed, "Oh, so that is what it looks like!" These are not rural myths, this is the reality of zealots. Regarding the proposed critical habitat designation itself, the Service has clearly done a disservice to the public. Even though the Service in 1985 originally found that designating critical habitat was not justified for this species, when faced with a court order to properly consider habitat designation, they reversed themselves. The Service should have stuck with their original finding but a few opportunistic Fish and Wildlife Service quasi- biologists proceeded to use this opportunity to develop a proposed 5