Remarks as Prepared for Deliver for
The Honorable Dirk Kempthorne,
Secretary of the Interior
Field and Stream Magazine
Heroes of Conservation Awards Dinner
New York, New York
September 20, 2007
I am honored to be here tonight to congratulate the winners of the 2007 Heroes of Conservation awards and to celebrate their extraordinary accomplishments.
I am delighted that my wife Patricia can join me here. We celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary this week. You may not believe it but I proposed to her under a tree in Boise that was planted by Theodore Roosevelt. We were married on top of Moscow Mountain in Idaho. I don’t think there is a more beautiful cathedral than God’s creation.
We celebrate the great leaders of conservation – Theodore Roosevelt is certainly at the top of the list – but when you tell the story of conservation in America, you find thousands of people just like tonight’s honorees. Sportsmen and -women who love our land and its fish and wildlife. Who take into their own hands the sacred responsibility to conserve them and, often, to restore them for future generations.
Where is such a great love born? It is born at dawn, as the early morning light peeks through the leaves to find a parent and child in a stand waiting patiently for a deer. It is born at twilight when a canoe slices through the still waters of a mountain lake and a fish rises to a fly. It is born at night around a campfire, with crickets chirping and shooting stars streaking across an inky sky.
If people stop hunting and fishing, conservation is in trouble. More importantly, if people can’t take their children and grandchildren hunting and fishing, conservation is in trouble.
For more than 100 years, hunters and anglers have been our nation’s foremost conservationists. When a wetland needs to be restored, hunters and anglers put on their boots. When trees need to be planted, sportsmen get out their shovels. When our refuge managers need volunteers, they find hunters and anglers waiting at the gate at the break of dawn.
If our hunting and fishing heritage is allowed to slowly fade away, who is going to bear the burden in the next generation? Plenty of organizations can put out a press release decrying loss of habitat or the decline of a species. But conservation requires muddy boots, not fax machines.
We need to ask how many in the next generation will be able to say, “When I was a child, my father took me hunting. My grandparents took me fishing. I camped under the stars and smelled the pines.”
Unfortunately, we now face a perfect storm when it comes to the future of conservation.
On one front, we have the ever-increasing urbanization of America. Growing numbers of citizens no longer have day-to-day contact with nature and the great outdoors. The Fish and Wildlife Service recently reported that the number of hunters 16 and older declined by 10 percent between 1996 and 2006. The number of anglers dropped 15 percent.
On a second front, we have the loss of access to hunting areas that is occurring in many places due to development and loss of habitat.
On a third front, we have the dawn of the Internet age. Vast numbers of children spend much of their lives in windowless rooms playing games on-line – games in which the hunted are often human. They are being swept up by the technological revolution – with its instant access, its lightning pace, its amazing graphics – and they lose something vital to the human soul.
Fortunately, my boss at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is a big supporter. President Bush sends his greetings to you tonight. I have a statement signed by the President. Let me read the last paragraph of it to you:
“I appreciate Field and Stream magazine and this year’s award winners for your commitment to conserving our natural resources and encouraging others to do their part. Your good work upholds our nation’s long tradition of conservation and ensures that our environment remains a source of pride for all our citizens. Laura and I send our best wishes for a memorable event.” Signed, George Bush.
As you may be aware, President Bush recently signed an executive order directing the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture to facilitate the expansion and enhancement of hunting as part of the management of game species and their habitat.
The Executive Order calls upon the Interior Department and others to take the actions necessary to foster healthy populations of game species, address declining trends in hunter participation, and create opportunities for a diverse cross section of our population to benefit from the sport of hunting.
The President also directed the White House Council on Environmental Quality to convene a White House Conference on North American Wildlife Policy. The goal of the conference is to develop a comprehensive Recreational Hunting and Wildlife Conservation Plan that sets forth a 10-year agenda to foster hunting opportunities through the use of hunting as a wildlife management tool.
The President and I are aware that many sportsmen are concerned about the effects of energy production and other development in key areas of the West. The October Field and Stream has an article and pictures about this issue. I want to bring you up to date on steps we are taking to ensure wildlife habitat is conserved.
In the 2008 budget currently being considered by Congress, the President proposed a Healthy Lands Initiative to help restore nearly half a million acres of federal land in six targeted areas of the West. These areas have seen growing conflict among competing uses of the land including energy production and recreational opportunities such as hunting.
Our country must develop its domestic energy resources and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. It is a matter of both national security and economic security.
Our goal, however, must be to deliver that energy to the nation in an environmentally sensitive way. In particular, we must maintain centuries-old wildlife corridors for game to continue into the far distant future.
The Healthy Lands Initiative will ensure a holistic approach to accomplishing this goal —one that considers all competing uses for the land and looks at entire landscapes, not just individual tracts.
The Green River Basin in Wyoming, for example, is one of these targeted areas in our Healthy Lands Initiative. As in other places in the West, the basin has world-class energy resources sitting under world-class wildlife resources. The area has enough natural gas to heat 4 million homes. It also has 100,000 deer, 100,000 pronghorn antelope, 40,000 elk, 8,000 moose and 1,400 bighorn sheep.
Under the Healthy Lands Initiative, we will use landscape-level conservation planning to develop the basin’s energy resources while conserving the wildlife habitat and the recreational opportunities that have made the area so popular for hunters and anglers. We will undertake restoration of riparian areas, plant sage grass, aspen and other native vegetation, restore water sources for wildlife, and form partnerships to complete other conservation projects.
In addition to the Healthy Lands Initiative, earlier this year we took another important step to conserve western landscapes and wildlife habitat. The Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service issued an update of Onshore Oil and Gas Order Number 1. This was the first update in 20 years. It will improve the way we regulate energy leasing on federal lands. It also addresses many of the issues that are of concern to sportsmen and western landowners related to preserving the wildlife values of the West as we develop our domestic energy.
For example, the Order addresses the issue of split estates by requiring energy operators to make good faith efforts to reach agreements with private surface owners. Where a good faith effort fails and no surface agreement can be reached, the Order requires the operator to post a bond to protect against damages to the surface.
In addition, the Order encourages the use of Best Management Practices to reduce surface impacts from oil and gas development. These include:
- drilling several wells from a single well pad,
- establishing buffer zones to protect wildlife,
- painting structures and machinery to match vegetation colors
Working with industry, I am confident we can and will develop our energy resources in an environmentally sound manner that supports the future of our hunting and fishing heritage.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly we are taking steps to get children back into nature. Back into the woods. Back onto the rivers.
Last summer, President Bush and I announced the Centennial Initiative for our National Park System. The goal of the initiative is to undertake and complete hundreds of projects to enhance our national parks in time for the 100th Anniversary of the National Park System in 2016. A major focus will be on reconnecting children and families to the outdoors.
In his 2008 budget, the President made the largest commitment ever to the future of our National Parks. As part of a $250 million increase of operating funds, he proposed a centennial commitment of $100 million a year over the next decade – $1 billion – to improve both our park infrastructure and the experience of the people visiting our parks.
Also as part of the President’s proposal, the Congress is working on a bipartisan basis to approve a mandatory 10-year commitment of $1 billion of federal funds when matched by an equal amount of private donations.
If our partners put up the full $1 billion, that would mean at least an additional $3 billion for projects and programs to improve our parks and enhance visitor experiences over the next 10 years. Rather than beginning work in 2016, we would be able to celebrate victory on the 100th Anniversary of the National Park System.,
When President Bush and I announced the Centennial Initiative a year ago, we were greeted with excitement but, frankly, some skepticism.
“You’ll never do it,” some people told me. “You won’t be able to raise the money. You’ll be lucky to get $20 million.
Skeptics are now believers. We didn’t receive $20 million in private contributions. We didn’t receive $100 million. We got more than $216 million. I have a notebook with 301 written letters from private donors, who commit to their share of funding once the federal match is received.
Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of announcing the first 201 projects and programs that will be undertaken, pending Congressional approval. Many of these are designed to draw families and children to our parks.
Wherever we can….whenever we can…we must build a bridge between our children and the outdoors. We need to put a fishing rod in their hands. We need to get them out into dew-covered fields at the break of day. We need to instill in them the love of nature that later in life will lift them up. That will lead them to follow the footsteps of tonight’s honorees and become heroes of conservation.
Let me close with a story from one of my first days in office as Secretary of the Interior. The Fish and Wildlife Service held a National Fishing Day event at a pond on the Mall in Washington. They stocked the pond with bass and bluegill and taught several hundred inner-city children to fish.
What a delight it was to see the smiles on these children’s faces when they reeled in their first fish. Many of these children have difficult lives that give them little reason to smile. What power a simple fishing line and pond have to light up their faces! And quite possibly change a life.
I remember one girl in particular. She was 10 years old. I asked her what she wanted to be in life. She said she wanted to be a children’s doctor.
I asked her where she got that idea. She said she often had to see a children’s doctor. I asked her if she had diabetes. She said “yes.” I asked her if she injected herself every day. She said yes she did.
I don’t know about you, but when I meet a 10-year-old who gets up every morning and gives herself injections, I consider her to be little hero.
If we can lift up this little hero by giving her a chance to breathe fresh air -- if we can build her self-esteem by teaching her to catch a fish -- then we may well someday have a new children’s doctor.
We may well someday have a hero of conservation.