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permits are sought is intended for commercial, industrial, or other economic use).15
Moreover, no one disputes that the discharge of fill into "isolated" waters that serve as migratory bird habitat will, in the aggregate, adversely affect migratory bird populations. See, e. g., 1 Secretary of the Interior, Report to Congress, The Impact of Federal Programs on Wetlands: The Lower Mississippi Alluvial Plain and the Prairie Pothole Region 79-80 (Oct. 1988) (noting that "isolated," phase 3 waters "are among the most important and also [the] most threatened ecosystems in the United States" because "[t]hey are prime nesting grounds for many species of North American waterfowl . . ." and provide "[u]p to 50 percent of the [U. S.] production of migratory waterfowl"). Nor does petitioner dispute that the particular waters it seeks to fill are home to many important species of migratory birds, including the second-largest breeding colony of Great Blue Herons in northeastern Illinois, App. to Pet. for Cert. 3a, and several species of waterfowl protected by international treaty and Illinois endangered species laws, Brief for Federal Respondents 7.16
In addition to the intrinsic value of migratory birds, see Missouri v. Holland, 252 U. S. 416, 435 (1920) (noting the importance of migratory birds as "protectors of our forests and our crops" and as "a food supply"), it is undisputed that
15 The fact that petitioner can conceive of some people who may discharge fill for noneconomic reasons does not weaken the legitimacy of the Corps' jurisdictional claims. As we observed in Perez v. United States, 402 U. S. 146 (1971), "[w]here the class of activities is regulated and that class is within the reach of federal power, the courts have no power to excise, as trivial, individual instances of the class." Id., at 154 (internal quotation marks omitted).
16 Other bird species using petitioner's site as habitat include the " 'Great Egret, Green-backed Heron, Black-crowned Night Heron, Canada Goose, Wood Duck, Mallard, Greater Yellowlegs, Belted Kingfisher, Northern Waterthrush, Louisiana Waterthrush, Swamp Sparrow, and Red-winged Blackbird.' " Brief for Petitioner 4, n. 3.
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