National Association of Regional Councils – March 17, 2003

Thank you Richard, I appreciate your warm welcome.

It is an honor to address the members of an institution that for more than three decades now have worked to foster regional cooperation, and as a result, has become the Nation's leader in building regional communities.

Thanks to the selfless work of many of you in this room, regional councils across the country have assisted other community leaders and citizens in developing common strategies for addressing economic development, air and water quality, growth, and other challenges to achieve regional excellence.

That is why I am proud to formalize our relationship with NARC through the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding at the conclusion of my remarks.

But first, I'd like to offer some observations about DOI's mission, and highlight some of our important initiatives.

When I was sworn in as the Nation's 48th Secretary of the Interior, I made a personal commitment- that at the end of my term, I want to know that I helped build an America with a healthier environment and a more secure economy.

To achieve this, I am committed to a new era in the conservation of our nation's natural resources; I call it "the new environmentalism".

Our 2004 $10.7 billion budget request provides the single clearest statement of how we will honor this commitment in the upcoming year.

It is the largest presidential budget request in the Department's history, and it lays the foundation to meeting our mission responsibilities.



We take great pride in our mission to:

Protect and manage the Nation's natural resources and cultural heritage on public lands; and

Provide scientific information about those resources.

Our responsibilities touch the lives of each individual across the Nation. How well we fulfill our mission influences:

Whether farmers will have water and people can turn on the tap;

Whether our children will enjoy America's grand vistas, places, and history;

Whether we can hike, bird watch, canoe, or hunt and fish in the great American outdoors; and

Whether our landscapes are healthy and our communities are thriving.

Fortunately, we are not alone in fulfilling these important objectives. Our public lands benefit from a wide array of conservation efforts by individuals, state and local governments, public and private organizations like NARC.

Now more than ever, managing our public resource requires creative and dynamic approaches between local citizens and land managers be developed and considered.

I've borrowed a story from history to illustrate that interaction.

When St. Petersburg, one of the most splendid and unique cities in Europe, was being laid out in the eighteenth century, many large boulders brought by a glacier in Finland had to be removed.

One particularly large rock was in the path of one of the principal avenues that had been planned, and bids were solicited for its removal.

The bids that were submitted were very high. This was understandable, because at the time, the modern machines we are familiar with did not exist and there were no high-powered explosives.

As officials pondered what to do, a local resident who lived nearby presented himself and offered to get rid of the boulder for a significant lower price than those submitted by the other "more credentialed" bidders presuming much more experience in public projects.

The city officials chose to take a risk and gave the job to the local peasant.

The next morning he showed up with a crowd of other peasants carrying shovels. They began digging a huge hole next to the rock. The rock was propped up with timbers to prevent it from rolling into the hole.

When the hole was deep enough, the timber props were removed and the rock dropped into the hole well below street level. It was then covered with dirt, and the excess dirt was carted away.

It's a simple example of what creative thinking can do to solve a problem. The unsuccessful bidders only thought about moving the rock from one place to another on the city's surface.

The peasant looked at the problem from another angle. He considered another dimension – up and down.

And so there it is; let us look at the current challenges from another dimension.

At Interior, we are using collaborative and community-based approaches to land management. We have been working on this approach because we believe it is a better means to deal with the complex challenges we face today.

No where is that challenge more evident than the issue managing water resources in the West. What was true 100 years ago remains true today. Managing water lies at the heart of maintaining healthy lands and thriving communities.

The poet Thomas Hornsby Ferris, wrote about the West: "Here is a land where life is written in water." The reality that we face today is that in some areas of the West there is not enough water to go around even in normal hydrological conditions.

The stakes are enormous for the West. Cities need water for their growing populations. Farmers need water to grow our food, Tribes need water for their people and their future, and fish and wildlife need water to survive.

Yet the population of the West and Southwest has exploded over the last decade. While the Census Bureau reports a national population growth rate of 13%, in the West the average is almost twice that. In several states it is much higher. Over the ten-year census period, Arizona had a 40 % growth rate and Nevada's was at 66%.

This trend shows no sign of changing; as Southern California alone projects that it will add another 6 million residents by 2025.

Our challenge is made greater by the drought that grips much of the West. We have before us a challenge that we cannot and must not fail to meet:

We must recognize the realities of life in the desert, and the limits on the amount of water that is available, in a way that protects both our environment and the economy of western communities.

The President's budget request emphasizes the need for water use efficiency in our water infrastructure. It is a commitment to return to the solid principles of conservation.

We will take steps to develop a resource management program that will respond to growing demands for water in the West while continuing to serve traditional users and adhere to state water laws.

The budget request includes $11.0 million to launch a Bureau of Reclamation Water Initiative that uses collaboration, conservation, and innovation to make sure every drop of water counts. This initiative is expected to benefit communities currently struggling with increased water demands, drought, and compliance with the Endangered Species Act.

The funding increase will be used to: develop pilot projects that demonstrate how to prevent crises-level water conflicts in the West; expand the use of science to improve desalination technology, promote adaptive management of watersheds, and fund peer review of Endangered Species Act consultations; design water management programs that address environmental needs on a basin-scale; and train Reclamation employees to help them better carry out the ESA as it relates to Federal actions.

Gateway Communities: The Department's parks, refuges, and public lands provide access for economic uses and activities that fuel the economic engines for communities adjacent to our Federal lands.

Recognizing that the Department's decisions can greatly impact these gateway communities, the Department is working in partnership with the people who live on the private lands that border these areas and developing collaborative approaches to address local issues.

Gateway communities often are the welcome wagon for our National Parks, wildlife refuges, monuments and public lands. With almost 500 million visits each year to the Department's lands, Interior provides a wide array of recreational opportunities, including fishing, hiking, hunting, camping, and wildlife viewing.

As the populations I spoke about move to new areas, new pressures on the natural landscape emerge. Citizens are looking for increased recreational opportunities on public lands, which challenges our land managers to provide high-quality opportunities while maintaining resource protection.

Increased population leads to increased urbanization, which leads to rising land use, cross-jurisdictional problems and growing use of facilities.

The changes make it harder to keep the West the way it was-its rural qualities after all, are what people want to see. The changes put enormous pressure on all of us to provide services.

We recognize that federal land managers must be partners with the nearby communities, businesses and local friends groups. Together we can plan for the visitors and offer them the best overall experience while making certain we protect our resources for others to enjoy in the future.

Experts are finding that results oriented collaboration is best started at the local level, in a specific place regarding the lands around that place, and not centered on broad public policy disputes.

For each acre, we have to determine what style of management best fits that land.

We are looking at ways to work with communities to fit our land management program into matching their regional needs-not the other way around. Working together, we can all pitch in to meet the needs of communities and visitors.

Some of you may have heard me say before that the Four C's is a guide to how I want Interior to move forward. They stand for communication, consultation and cooperation, all in the service of conservation.

At the heart of the Four C's is the belief that for conservation to be successful, we must involve the people who live on, work on, and love the land. I am committed to working with all of you in partnership toward the goal of managing our federal lands more effectively and promoting recreational activities on them.

The Four C's stand in contrast to traditional "Washington knows best" approaches of the past.

Consistent with this view, this years budget includes the Cooperative Conservation Initiative. Funded at over $110 million, CCI will empower citizen stewards to conserve and protect natural resources, while also achieving important community and economic goals.
The Initiative builds on existing conservation partnership programs and will provide new and expanded opportunities for landowners, land managers, and others to participate in projects that foster innovation and create incentives for stewardship.

The 2004 CCI request builds upon Interior's long history of working collaboratively with others. It allows land managers to better work with you in local communities.

It also allows private landowners to apply for cost-sharing grants to do voluntary projects that advance the health of the land and benefit people and wildlife. These would not be mandates from Washington, but voluntary efforts to work together for conservation.

President's Healthy Forest Initiative: The differences between long-distance political debates and productive negotiations can be illustrated by reaction to the President's Healthy Forest Initiative.

To hear critics describe it, the Healthy Forest Initiative is an undercover effort to move the West back to a logging economy.

In reality, it is an effort to protect western communities. It is an effort to allow you to have a tourist economy near public lands. The fact is, America's public lands are a fundamental component of regional landscapes that provide a range of economic, cultural and social benefits.

Tourists don't visit burned-out forests or camp at burned over BLM lands. I don't have to remind you how devastating last year's fire season was on both resources and tourism. More than 6 million acres burned-that is an area larger than the entire state of New Jersey.

While fire is a natural part of a forest ecosystem, these fires were beyond natural. They burned hotter and faster resulting in immeasurable devastation.

As you well know, thousands of communities near Federal land are at risk from fire. Some groups are claiming that we only need to worry about the wildland urban interface areas. Frankly, such a narrowly focused strategy doesn't protect watersheds or critical habitat or endangered species in the rest of public lands.

Hundreds of communities have been affected by wildland fires either through evacuation, or tragically, destruction of homes or businesses this year. In Colorado alone, 77,000 people were forced to temporarily evacuate their homes. Others included Show Low, Arizona, Rodeo Chedeski, Cave Junction, or Biscuit; communities like yours.

Working together, federal and local firefighters controlled 99.7% of these fires on the initial attack. We are doing our job and we have been able to put many more resources into firefighting thanks to the President's leadership.

But the extensive drought, the dense fuel loads and disease and insect infestation allowed some fires to explode. A century of fire suppression and poor forest management has left them overgrown and subject to intense, unnatural wild fires that destroy everything in their paths.

It does not have to continue like this. We have tools available to us: prescribed fires and mechanical thinning. During the height of the fire season, President Bush was able to illustrate how deadly fires burned in the Squires fire in Oregon where no treatment had taken place. Where there was thinning, the fire burned low to the ground, swept through quickly and left no lasting damage.

The budget proposes almost $700 million for wildfire prevention and, almost $50 million more than last year's budget proposal. The budget allows the Department to treat 307,000 high priority acres in the wildland-urban interface and an additional 768,000 acres that are not in the wildland-urban interface.

The Department is accelerating project planning and selection, issuing policy guidance and proposed legislative language designed to facilitate and expand contracting in the fuels program, and issuing policy guidance to expedite the budget allocation process for the fuels program and individual projects.

The fuels treatment program is key to restoring forests and rangelands to long-term health and preventing damage caused by catastrophic wildfires.

One approach to improving forest health that holds promise is stewardship contracting. Stewardship contracts allow the private sector, non-profit organizations, and local communities to productively use materials generated from forest thinning.

Lastly, we will continue funding for Rural Fire Assistance at $10.0 million. Frequently, local firefighting departments are the first responders to wildland fires on public lands and play a vital role in preventing fires from escaping initial attack.

In 2002, the Department assisted 5,349 rural and volunteer fire departments through grants, technical assistance, training, supplies, equipment, and public education support.

In conclusion, I am mindful that the decisions we make at the Department of the Interior cause the most impact wherever there is a confluence of people, land, and water.

And as such, we are providing the changes necessary in our public policies to allow for flexibility in management and to make room for as much local and regional input as possible--those most affected, not just the interested.

The proposition I leave with you today is that leadership matters and you are the leaders closest to the land. Leaving a legacy of healthy lands and thriving communities requires resources, creativity, and, above all, collaboration.

This is the path to a new environmentalism, a path away from conflict and toward consensus and partnership. This is the path this administration has taken. And I am confident that working together we will succeed.

Thank you for the leadership you show every day in meeting the challenge of protecting our nation's heritage; our public lands.