[Introduced by Paul Schmidt, Assistant Director Migratory Birds, FWS]

[Introduced by Paul Schmidt, Assistant Director Migratory Birds, FWS]

I am glad to be here today, to sign an international agreement to extend cooperation on waterfowl management for 15 years. We are working with Canada and Mexico on the North American Waterfowl Management Plan.

Yesterday, I had the privilege of congratulating Mark Anderson for his beautiful picture which won the 2004 Federal Duck Stamp contest. His was only one of a number of truly poetic pictures of waterfowl in the contest.

America has long recognized the need for wildlife conservation. Teddy Roosevelt created the first refuge over 100 years ago. The Duck Stamp program began in the 1930's.

For a long time, waterfowl appeared to be headed towards disaster. Ducks and geese were vanishing from the skies. The habitat they depended on was disappearing at about 60 acres each hour. In 1985, waterfowl populations had fallen to record lows.

The situation was just as alarming in Canada, where many U.S. waterfowl breed.

Faced with the destruction of waterfowl populations, biologists and policymakers acted. U.S. and Canadian officials came together to protect and conserve waterfowl and their habitat. They developed a conservation strategy based on their shared responsibilities, one grounded in ecological science and fixed on a continental vision.

In 1986, the Secretary of the Interior and the Canadian Minister of the environment formalized the agreement by signing the North American Waterfowl Management Plan.

It envisioned a 15 year effort, premised in the art of the possible but established on the ideal of cooperative stewardship. Their partnership became the foundation of hundreds of other related partnerships. Mexico signed on in 1994.

Though the plan is international in scope, it depends on regional implementation and local action.

There are three ways in which conservation is effected - through scientific study, through joint ventures and through the North American Wetlands Conservation Act.

Biologists of the partnering countries constantly monitor waterfowl populations. The information that they gather is put to the work of conservation though the plan's 14 Joint Ventures. Partners in each joint venture protect waterfowl habitat in different regions.

For instance, the Atlantic Coast Joint Venture, one of the original joint ventures, was initially focused on preserving and restoring the habitat of the American Black Duck and other waterfowl species.

Since then, its mission has grown to cover habitats for a wide variety of birds. Its partnerships have also grown. Current partners in the joint venture include all of the states along the East Coast, from Maine to Florida.

There are government agencies like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service. There are also conservation groups like the Nature Conservancy and Ducks Unlimited.

Each has an important place; each plays a critical part in waterfowl conservation. (President's executive order on cooperative conservation.)

The North American Wetlands Conservation Act, which President Bush reauthorized in 2002, is also essential to fulfilling the waterfowl management plan. It provides matching grants to individuals, agencies and organizations which have come together for the purpose of wetlands preservation. Partners must match the grant request on at least a 1-1 ratio.

More than $600 million has been invested through the act. Total contributions have topped $1.7 billion.

The money tells only part of the story. From September 1990 to June 2004, more than 2,000 partners have become involved with almost 1,100 NAWCA grant supported projects. As a consequence, more than 22 million acres of wetlands and associated uplands have been protected or improved.

Already this year, U.S. grants funded by the North American Wildlife Conservation Act will pay for 22 projects in 13 states, protecting or restoring more than 1.1 million acres. Project partners will contribute up to $150 million.

Three projects were recently funded through the North American Wetlands Conservation Act in Maine. The New England Forestry Foundation and its partners will receive up to $1 million, and will use it to contribute $24 million toward the preservation of nearly 340,000 acres.

The four partners of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife will receive $1 million, and contribute $29 million for the conservation of more than 476,000 acres of wetlands.

Another wetlands conservation project is underway to protect coastal wetlands at Greater Pleasant Bay.

Yet as impressive as these efforts are, they form only one part of this administration's commitment to protecting wetlands.

This past Earth Day, right here in Maine, President Bush announced an aggressive new national goal for wetlands stewardship. Over the next five years, the President has told federal agencies to create, improve and protect at least three million new acres of wetlands, creating new habitat each year.

The President's fiscal year 2005 budget request echoes that commitment. It includes $4.4 billion for conservation programs that have funding for wetlands, an increase of more than 50 percent ($1.5 billion) over fiscal year 2001.

President Bush recently told Field and Stream magazine that one of his primary conservation goals for his second term would be to fully implement the wetlands policy, to move from "no net loss" to an overall increase.

We are continuing to work - and plan - for the future.

This revised North American Waterfowl Management Plan is similar to the original plan in scope and vision, but brings new knowledge and new perspective about what will be needed for waterfowl conservation over the next 15 years.

It will require new efforts and a continuance of the science-based, partnership-oriented approach to conservation it was established on.

The most important of the Plan's revised objectives is strengthening the biological foundation of the program. As 2004 Plan itself noted, "Waterfowl population objectives . . . can only be achieved through an understanding of the habitat conditions necessary to sustain target population levels."

Understanding those habitat conditions will require detailed study of the ecosystems involved, and an adaptive approach to management that allows populations to be measured.

That will not be easy, since waterfowl populations and the habitats in which they reside are constantly changing. As human activities have played an important role in habitat protection, they may also again play a role in habitat degradation.

Dangers and challenges are there, but so are opportunities. There are opportunities for the power of partnerships to work, for individual acts of stewardship to produce extraordinary results.

The partnerships that have formed for the purpose of waterfowl protection have already had extraordinary successes.

The North American Waterfowl Management Plan has been more of a success than many imagined possible. As of the end of last year, the plan's partners had invested more than $2.2 billion to protect, restore, and enhance more than 8 million acres of waterfowl habitat.

More waterfowl can be seen all across North America, even though a few species are still threatened. Because of those healthy populations, the Fish and Wildlife Service was able to issue hunting regulations similar to last year's.

There are many reasons to trumpet today's agreement. It marks the renewal of wildly successful conservation plan, the continuance of many successful conservation partnerships. It means that sharp-eyed hunters are likely to have more game in their sights; that sharp-eyed bird watchers will continue to see more waterfowl.

Yet we must never forget that conservation is a continuous process. It depends, not on the renewal of a five-year agreement between nations, but rather on daily actions of individual stewardship.

We dare not forget that waterfowl populations were once desperately diminished, that they have only come back due to care and conservation.

I look forward to continuing to work with you all, to restore abundant waterfowl throughout North America.

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