LEXIS-NEXIS® Congressional Universe-Document

Search Terms: "Lands Legacy Initiative", House or Senate or Joint

Document 52 of 118.

APRIL 13, 1999, TUESDAY

SECTION: IN THE NEWS

LENGTH: 2104 words

HEADLINE: PREPARED STATEMENT OF
RANDALL D. SNODGRASS
DIRECTOR, GOVERNMENT RELATIONS
WORLD WILDLIFE FUND
BEFORE THE HOUSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE
INTERIOR SUBCOMMITTEE
SUBJECT - THE FISCAL YEAR 2000 BUDGET

BODY:

World Wildlife Fund appreciates the opportunity to present its views on the President's FY 2000 budget for the Interior Department and the U.S. Forest Service. WWF is very supportive of the administration's overall budget request, including the significant increase for natural resource management and conservation agencies in the Department of the Interior and the President's Lands Legacy initiative. This statement will highlight specific program budgets that are important to WWF's goals of recovering endangered species, achieving ecoregion-based conservation, and effectively dealing with global threats to biodiversity-- overfishing, toxic chemicals, climate change, and unsustainable logging.
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
Everglades Ecosystem Restoration Scientists at World Wildlife Fund have identified the South Florida Everglades as one of the most unique and important ecoregions in North America, and also one of the most threatened. WWF has selected 25 ecoregions in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and North America in which to focus our highest priority attention during the next five years. These are the places we believe simply must be protected if we are going to make a serious effort to save the diversity of life on Earth.
WWF greatly appreciates the attention and the priority this Subcommittee has given to Everglades restoration, and especially the commitment of Chairman Regula and his staff to this project. We understand fully the constraints you are under with your tight-- some would say unreasonable -spending ceilings. However, the fact is, undoing the past damage to the Everglades system -- a result of the Central and South Florida project--will take decades and a great deal of money.
The Clinton Administration request of $312 million for the South Florida/Everglades Restoration project is a sizeable and absolutely essential increase in federal funding for this effort. Just last week, the Army Corps of Engineers released its final draft Comprehensive Plan for restoration. We currently are analyzing the document. Our initial reaction is cautious optimism that this plan accelerates key restoration projects adequately and gives a sufficiently clear priority to improving water flows into Everglades National Park and Florida Bay.
The plan contemplates a total federal expenditure of roughly $4 billion for Everglades restoration over the next two decades. It is clear that, during the next few years, there will be a need to ramp up current levels of funding for this purpose, especially the Army Corps' budget. We believe the administration's FY 2000 request is an excellent step toward strengthening the federal commitment to this world-class ecoregion.
We strongly support the request for the Interior Department of $151 million for Everglades restoration for continued research and monitoring, management of federal (ands in the ecoregion, critical water delivery to Everglades National Park and Florida Bay, integrated endangered species recovery, and essential !and purchases. The federal/state Everglades restoration program must be a true partnership, and we strongly believe Interior must remain in a lead role. The department needs the requested level of funding to exercise that responsibility effectively.
We are confident there is real potential for success in restoring the Everglades for the following reasons:
- Public support for the Everglades in Florida and at the national level is strong, and there is a broad recognition that restoring the Everglades ecosystem is an important national goal. - Everglades restoration has attracted strong bipartisan political support in Washington and in Florida, including key leaders of both parties in both houses of Congress. Florida's new Governor Jeb Bush also has made strong public statements pledging his support for a restored Everglades.
- We now have a clear understanding of how natural hydrological conditions of South Florida have been disrupted to serve urban and agricultural interests. Scientists and policy experts believe that nearly natural timing, flow and delivery of water can be restored through much of the Everglades ecosystem while enhancing water supply for urban areas and protecting the needs of agriculture.
- At long last, we are at the stage where specific water management decisions and projects are about to happen, which will begin the long process of actual restoration. The recent completion of the purchase by the federal government of more than 60,000 acres in the Everglades Agricultural Area for water storage and clean-up is an excellent example of this progress.
We would also like to point out the critical importance of a fully funded Land and Water Conservation Fund to the success of Everglades restoration. In FY 2000, the administration has requested $80 million from the fund to purchase lands essential to the overall restoration of the ecosystem, and especially to improve water flows and levels in Northeast Shark Slough. The State of Florida continues to acquire property for Everglades restoration from several sources of funding, including its nationally acclaimed P-2000 program, the largest single conservation land purchase program in the country. Hopefully, this program will be renewed by the Florida legislature for another decade this session, and a specific program for funding the state share of Everglades restoration may be adopted.
LWCF money is essential to the Everglades, and it is important to the conservation and recreation needs of the nation. However, the country needs a commitment of funds to LWCF of at least $900 million every year.f The Everglades is one of many national conservation priorities that deserve attention and support from LWCF. The Appalachian Trail, northern New England's forests, the Mississippi Delta, San Francisco Bay and the Baca Ranch in northern New Mexico are a few other examples of nationally significant conservation lands that demand LWCF funding.
We also urge the Subcommittee to restore some reasonable level of funding to the state LWCF matching grant program. This past November, Americans demonstrated great concern about vanishing resources and open space by supporting local ballot initiatives that address these problems. It is clear there is a major need for a dramatic increase in federal, state and local support and participation in enhancing and expanding a wide range of urban and non-urban recreation and conservation opportunities throughout America outside of areas served by the federal lands. Congress should fully fund LWCF, and it should revive and revitalize the State and Local Assistance program. U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE
African Elephant, Asian Elephant and Rhino/Tiger Conservation Funds WWF supports the President's request for $1 million each for the African Elephant, Asian Elephant, Rhinoceros and Tiger Conservation Funds.

The Chinese Year of the Tiger has just ended. During this past year, WWF, the National Geographic Society, and other conservation organizations focused the public's attention on the plight of the tiger and how we can help protect this magnificent species. We strongly support the administration's proposed increase to $1 million for the Rhino and Tiger Fund and urge the Subcommittee to fully fund the President's request. Funding allocated under these three programs has proven that the spiral toward extinction for these species can be stopped. Additional funds are urgently needed for protected area conservation, anti-poaching efforts, monitoring populations, translocating animals, and mitigating human/wildlife conflicts.
Endangered Species WWF applauds the $4.1 million increase in funding for endangered species programs requested by the President for FY 2000. We enthusiastically support the $10.1 million increase for consultations and habitat conservation planning under sections 7 and 10 of the ESA. Consultation and HCP procedures have been successful at reconciling species conservation with development projects, but monitoring of the impacts of resulting incidental take of species has been lacking. We urge that a large percentage of this budget increase be dedicated to monitoring functioning HCPs and section 7 incidental take authorizations in order to ensure, as the law requires, that those activities are not reducing appreciably the likelihood of the survival and recovery of the affected species.
Environmental Contaminants WWF believes the USFWS Division of Environmental Contaminants (DEC) is woefully underfunded. At the proposed funding level of $10.1 million for FY 2000, the program will not meet its objectives of investigating and assessing the effects of environmental contaminants on wildlife and maintaining a "scientifically credible program through proper program support, training, and technical assistance."
Reports from around the nation and the world indicate more strongly than ever that wildlife populations are being stressed by contaminants. The DEC is the government agency best qualified to investigate reports of feminized male fish and bird kills caused by legal pesticide use.
The importance of the USFWS work on environmental contaminants is increased even more by recent recommendations from a federal advisory committee on screening and testing chemicals. In response to Congress's mandate for EPA to establish a screening and testing program for hormone-disrupting chemicals by August 1999, this stakeholder advisory committee (of industry, environmentalists, and others) reached strong consensus-based conclusions on how such a program should be designed. There is an important role to be played by the USFWS in providing the information on exposures and effects in wildlife from such chemicals in the environment. EPA simply does not do this kind of work, emphasizing, instead, human health impacts. But there is no indication whatsoever that the USFWS has changed its budget to accommodate these recommendations.
The DEC cannot adequately respond, under its present or proposed budget, to the increasing demands for investigation and public education. For the past two years, WWF has urged the Subcommittee to increase the administration's proposed budget to $18 million. We are pleased with the modest increases in FY98 and FY99 appropriations. However, a more substantial increase is justified. Funding for the program should be significantly increased to give the USFWS analytical capability it currently lacks, and to help it assist partner states, universities, and other agencies in assessing adverse effects in wildlife. Funds should be used to upgrade the Patuxent Analytical Control Facility and to support forensic field investigations with USFWS partners. These investigations, in the past, have provided early warnings of chemical threats to wildlife and humans.
U.S. FOREST SERVICE
WWF supports the administration's increase in the road maintenance and road decommissioning and stabilization budgets. Even with these increases, however, more than half our nation's forest road system will still be in need of repair and maintenance. Road failures continue to be a major forest health problem on public lands and have contributed to the degradation of fisheries, water quality, and slope destabilization.
WWF endorses the cooperative activities of the Forest Service through the activities of state and private forestry programs. Thus, we support the agency's Forest Stewardship, Stewardship Incentives, Forest Legacy, and Urban and Community Forestry programs. These programs provide high visibility to the public on forestry operations that are based on sound stewardship and land protection principles and are held in high regard with the public. However, our experience suggests these programs are largely underfunded and will not be able to keep up with growing demand.
WWF urges the Subcommittee to appropriate $80 million for the Forest Legacy program. The program has a proven track record of protecting environmentally significant privately owned forests from being converted to other uses through purchase of permanent conservation easements. For northern New England alone, the Northern Forest Alliance has identified tens of millions of dollars of specific, high priority Legacy projects that need funding. In closing, WWF wishes to express our gratitude to Chairman Regula and members of the Subcommittee for their support for conservation. We hope that you will block any attempts by members of this body to attach anti-environmental riders to the legislation you author.
Thank you.
END

LOAD-DATE: April 15, 1999

Document 52 of 118.


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