Thank you. I am pleased to be with you, to be among you, to be counted as a steward and a conservationist.

This is a bittersweet occasion, since one of my favorite wildlife managers will soon be joining you. Steve really reached out to hunters and anglers as Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service. I am sure he will serve the Wildlife Management Institute with the same excellence and spirit.

Matt Hogan, who is currently the deputy director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, will be serving as acting director.

I would also like to provide a special thanks to Marshall Jones. He served as Acting Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service before Steve was sworn in, and he continues to provide sound advice and direction. In 2002, his management skills were properly rewarded with the Presidential Rank Award for meritorious service.

Over the past years, Steve Williams and I have met with many of you, and the leaders of your organizations. Today, we have gathered again, with a passion for the environment and a purpose to improve it.

What you do is so important. Conservation of wildlife and the natural world may not dominate the newspaper headlines. But it is a vital passion for countless Americans.

Where does the desire to conserve come from? For me, it began in my home state of Colorado. I grew up there, I went to school there, and I am happiest when I'm somewhere high in the Rockies.

I would like to share with you a story from my home state that illustrates both environmental neglect and an emerging environmental success.

I grew up about 5 miles from a place all the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, in the suburbs of Denver. I have childhood memories of earthquakes along the Front Range. They knocked plates off the shelves and a local church off its foundation.

We eventually found out a nearly unbelievable fact - the earthquakes were stimulated by man's activities. They were coming from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, where the Army was disposing of chemical waste by injecting it deep in the earth.

The Arsenal was established as a chemical weapons plant during World War II, when our nation was facing a terrible challenge from tyranny. That mission continued as the Iron Curtain rose, and communism took the place of fascism. The weapons produced at the Arsenal were part of the vigilance necessary to protect liberty.

But there were unintended consequences. We did not fully appreciate the impact of chemicals on our environment. Nor did we understand how to dispose of them.

I remember as a girl being frightened of the specter of the Arsenal. We were told that a single drop of the chemical weapons would kill you. The Arsenal was widely known as, "the most polluted square mile on earth."

When I became Colorado Attorney General, state and federal governments were still battling about the cleanup. We took the litigation to federal court of appeals, and won a ruling that the state had a real role in determining how the Rocky Mountain Arsenal should be cleaned up. When the state finally won a seat at the table, we were able to negotiate a clean-up plan.

Today, a decade later, the cleanup is moving ahead. About a year ago, I went back to Denver to celebrate the transfer of 5,000 acres from the Army to the Fish and Wildlife Service, and to dedicate the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge. The Arsenal is teeming with wildlife. Deer wander there, hawks soar above it.

Eventually 10,000 more acres will be transferred to complete the refuge. The refuge will be a place of wonder for generations to come, one of our largest urban refuges. It will be a living gift to the residents of Denver and the citizens of America. It will be a living reminder that the worst environmental excesses can be restored.

In a sense, the story of the Arsenal-turned-Refuge is the story of conservation in America. Forty years ago, there were many areas of environmental devastation across the country: Love Canal brought toxic pollutants to the front pages; Ohio's Cuyahoga River caught on fire.

Fortunately, excesses on that scale are largely a thing of the past. But there is still a great deal of work to do. Today, Americans realize how valuable our natural world is; we understand that we all have a role in its renewal.

Conservation is a high priority in this administration. President Bush and I are committed to environmental stewardship. The President is a hunter and a fisherman. He has had hosted wildlife leaders at his ranch.

On many occasions, the President has told me and the other members of his Cabinet that we are not here to mark time. Waiting out the clock serves neither the cause of the nation nor the interests of conservation. We are here for action. We were reelected to achieve results, and we plan wide-sweeping improvements over the next four years.

We have a vision of great results in conservation being achieved through cooperation.

I am passionate about partnerships. Perhaps I am too passionate. Last month, one organization accused the Park Service of "promiscuous partnering."

Yet I truly believe that for conservation to be successful, the government must involve the people who live and work on the land. Millions of willing hands working together form the best foundation for results in conservation.

That is the reason that the cornerstone of this Administration's approach at Interior has been the 4 C's - communication, consultation, and cooperation, all in the service of conservation. Last year, the President made this a government-wide effort by issuing an executive order on cooperative conservation.

President Bush has made significant investments in cooperative conservation programs because he believes in their power.

From 2002 through 2005, the Interior Department has provided $1.7 billion in grants to states, private landowners, hunting and fishing groups, and other conservation groups to preserve open space, restore habitat, and conserve species. Many in this room have partnered with us.

Our budget for 2006 proposes $381 million in cooperative conservation programs, which is nearly triple what these programs received in 2000.

We believe that the money is well-spent, since it is being used to achieve remarkable results.

Partnerships have the power to literally improve the landscape. The partnerships between your organizations and the Department of the Interior are doing so, one project, one acre, one community at a time.

The meetings President Bush held with you in the White House and at Crawford, as well as the meetings Steve Williams and I held with you in Washington and around the country, have made a difference.

Together, we have improved access to public lands for sportsmen. Together, we have worked on a variety of policies, including those that affect refuge management, wetlands and energy policy.

Partners and their partnerships are making a measurable difference in conservation all across the country - from the grasslands of the Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico, from California to North Dakota.

For instance, 150 acres of wetlands will be restored, 100 acres of native grasses will be established, and 35 miles of riparian areas will be protected or enhanced at the French Creek Watershed in Northern Pennsylvania.

The project is happening through the cooperative efforts of several groups: Ducks Unlimited, Pheasants Forever, the Pennsylvania Game Commission, and the Fish and Wildlife Service. Through Challenge Cost Share Grants, the Fish and Wildlife Service has contributed about $275,000 to the project. Partners have leveraged that into more than $631,000.

Pheasants Forever is leading the Minnesota Habitat Corridors Partnership. The project restores the habitat corridors of fish and wildlife that run through private lands.

Through this effort, one of the largest collaborations for conservation in the country, migration routes are being strengthened, flood and erosion control is being improved, and hunting and fishing recreational opportunities are being enhanced.

Nearly 1,500 acres of wetlands and coastal prairie were set aside for conservation in Galveston County Texas, thanks to a multi-partnered land acquisition effort.

To make it happen, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Coastal Program worked very closely several partners, including a variety of state agencies and Scenic Galveston Inc., the local land trust.

Thanks to those efforts, wading birds and wintering waterfowl will have important foraging areas, while mottled ducks will have nesting sites. Just as importantly, bird watchers and naturalists will have a wild area to enjoy. So will the residents of Galveston and the citizens of the nation.

The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, the National Wild Turkey Federation, the Arkansas Game and Fish Foundation, and the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission have partnered with the National Park Service to establish and restore elk habitat at Buffalo National River, Arkansas.

The list of projects could go on and on. Grasslands are being restored in Michigan's Lower Peninsula. Cutthroat trout passages are being repaired along the Thomas Fork River in Bear Lake County Idaho. Invasive plant species are being contained and controlled in the Flint Hills of Kansas.

The sage grouse is one of our recent multi-state successes. The sage grouse was not placed on the Endangered Species list, thanks to an unprecedented voluntary conservation effort that covered much of the West.

The leaders of the 11 Western states with sage grouse populations came together with ranchers, farmers and state and federal land managers. Tribes came together, as did power companies and even Canadian provinces.

As a result, sage grouse numbers have stabilized, and could be on the rebound. Those cooperative efforts of conservation must continue.

The North American Wetlands Conservation Act and the North American Waterfowl Management Plan continue to be one of our primary means for conserving wetlands and protecting waterfowl.

Like the Act, the Plan is international in scope, reaching across the tripartite partnership of Canada, Mexico, and the United States.

The two - the Act and the Plan - complement each other. They are models of vision and action. Together, the Plan and the Act have formed the basis for one of the most successful conservation efforts in the world.

Those who invest in the federal Duck Stamp Program are also partners in conservation. Since 1934, when the program was established, sales of Duck Stamps have raised more than $700 million to help conserve more than 5 million acres of prime bird habitat in the National Wildlife Refuge System.

These programs are among the many ways we are doing more restoration work on wetlands. Three decades ago, wetlands were vanishing and waterfowl populations were plunging. From the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, the United States lost more than 450,000 acres of wetlands each year.

Last year, new figures released by the Department of Agriculture showed that America had reversed the annual net loss of wetlands on farms.

I applaud our success. But we will do even better.

In his Earth Day speech last year, President Bush committed the government to moving "beyond the no net loss of wetlands in America to having an overall increase in American wetlands over the next five years."

Fulfilling the President's commitment will require the protection of at least one million acres of wetlands; the improvement of at least one million acres of wetlands; and the restoration and creation of at least one million acres of wetlands.

We have already made significant progress toward meeting the President's mandate. Last year (2004), the Fish and Wildlife Service, in cooperation with partners like you, established, enhanced, and protected a total of more than 440,000 acres.

Reaching the President's ambitious goal will also require us to establish a reliable measure of the wetlands we have. So we are going to improve on the ground data collection through better interagency coordination. We will also do a better job tracking the progress of wetland programs.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is preparing a nation-wide analysis of wetlands status and trends. The analysis will provide an essential metric to the government; the baseline which we will use to measure our progress toward achieving, and perhaps even surpassing the no-net-loss goal.

Several federal agencies are cooperatively funding the study, which is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

As I mentioned earlier, the President signed an executive order on Cooperative Conservation last August.

The order affirmed the administration's ethos of conservation through cooperation, and confirmed the administration's dedication to advancing environmental protections through partnerships.

The order called for a White House conference on Cooperative Conservation within one year. It also directed federal agencies to ensure increased local participation in Federal decision making.

The President wants tangible results from his executive order. We committed to delivering them.

I am pleased to announce that we are changing the way we work with you. When making significant land use decisions, federal agencies have not always consulted with state or local governments.

We are reversing that. We are committing the Department to cooperate more closely with you. We want to change the way we work under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by listening and working more closely with state and local governments.

The Department is committed to reaching out to a variety of groups when making decisions that affect how our public lands are managed. Federal agencies should work to have state and local governments and tribes at the table as we prepare the land use plans that will affect them.

We are making two specific changes that will improve how we cooperatively manage public lands. First, the Bureau of Land Management will soon publish a final rule on "Cooperating Agencies."

That soon-to-be-published rule requires the Bureau to proactively invite and encourage interested parties - state and local governments, tribes and state fish and game agencies - to participate in writing our land use plans.

The change means that BLM will reach out to state game and fish agencies to be part of the decision-making process as we move forward on our planning. And it requires that they include willing local governments in this process.

Second, we will soon be publishing an amendment to our Departmental Manual that will require all the agencies in the Department to follow similar procedures.

This "cooperating agency status" may not seem like a large change, but it should have a profound effect on the way the Department operates. Cooperating Agency Status provides state and local government an opportunity to be at the table when the federal government makes decisions about land use.

Here is how it works. When federal agencies prepare an Environmental Impact Statement - whether it is for a Bureau of Land Management land use plan, a refuge management plan, or a Park Service general management plan - they will notify states, tribes, and county commissioners.

Then they will welcome them to get involved in the decision-making process. State game and fish agencies should be sitting at the table with federal agencies. So should County commissioners.

Our "cooperating agencies" should not merely be members of the commenting public. "Cooperating agencies" should be a part of the process as we develop our range of alternatives, when we decide on a preferred alternative and when we make final decisions.

That input and involvement is important to this Administration. President Bush has called for increased local participation in Federal decision making. This new Bureau of Land Management rule and Departmental Manual change will help institute His directive.

We need your active involvement. A long comment letter on a draft Environmental Impact Statement is not as helpful to a land management agency as having an actual representative from the state game and fish agency sitting at the table, helping develop alternatives and decisions.

Unfortunately, that rarely happens now. Yet great differences can be made at the local level, where there is a greater knowledge of conditions, a greater understanding of issues, and a greater insight into solutions.

For those who are not government officials, there is still a chance to be a part of our planning - through state game and fish and through county commissioners - that rises above simply "commenting" or sending letters and email.

I hope you will take advantage of the opportunity offered through our proposed changes in Cooperating Agency Status.

I also hope that you will continue to work with us on our array of ambitious conservation initiatives.

There is so much that we can do as partners. Together, as friends and partners, we can achieve results in wildlife conservation that will return blessings to this nation for generations to come.

Thank you.