Release No. 0479.99 Remarks As Prepared for Delivery by Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman National Summit on Private Lands Conservation Ames, Iowa December 7, 1999 "Thank you very much, Senator Harkin. It's a pleasure to be here in Ames to be a part of this summit. What makes this gathering so extraordinary is the broad cross-section of participants: farmers, Fortune 500 executives, scholars, elected officials, environmental advocates, and so on. Only through a dialogue that includes all these voices, that considers all these interests and takes in all this expertise, will we be able to craft effective conservation strategies for the new millennium. "At the beginning of this century, President Theodore Roosevelt, Aldo Leopold, Gifford Pinchot and the other fathers of American conservation had the vision to recognize that certain natural gems deserved unique protection. Thus was born our system of national parks and forests, and eventually wildlife refuges, grasslands, seashores and wilderness areas. "Under the leadership of President Clinton, we are renewing that commitment to public lands. And now, as we prepare for a new century, we need to deepen our commitment to conservation of America's private lands. As Deputy Secretary Rominger noted, the vast majority of our national landscape is privately held. Farmers, ranchers and forest landowners, in addition to meeting the food and fiber needs of the nation and much of the world, are also charged with the care of two-thirds of our land. "But for most of this century, they haven't been forced to go it alone. Ever since FDR led us out of the dustbowl in the 1930s, the federal government -- through the Forest Service, the Soil Conservation Service and its successor NRCS has been there as a conservation partner for private landowners. "That federal commitment has grown over the years, and I was fortunate to be able to help build that commitment by working on the 1985 and 1990 Farm Bills. In 1985, for the first time, we linked eligibility for farm program benefits to land stewardship. In 1990, we expanded agricultural conservation programs and, for the first time, included a forestry title. And 1996 brought the most environmentally progressive farm bill ever, which included, among other things, a new farmland protection provision and an Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which targets priority areas identified by local communities as conservation problem spots. The 14-year-old Conservation Reserve Program is now more effective than ever, since we converted it from a straight supply-control mechanism to a genuine conservation program. "The American conservation movement has been a success. Through a combination of federal leadership and local and community action, we've managed to restore a blighted American landscape. But as we take stock of where we are, we find that we have a lot of work still to do. "Today, I'm releasing highlights of the Department of Agriculture's National Resources Inventory -- or NRI a statistical analysis conducted every five years, which serves as a kind of national check-up for America's private lands. And the diagnosis this time is a somewhat troubling one. On the one hand, we've made extraordinary strides. On the other hand, conservation challenges are mounting and intensifying more quickly than we are solving them. "The NRI concludes that, although we've been quite successful in conquering soil erosion on our most fragile lands, we are no longer making progress in overall erosion control. It finds that urban sprawl and development are swallowing up some of our best farm and forest land at an unprecedented rate. Wetland losses have accelerated, although we've been able to mitigate the impact on agricultural lands. And surprisingly, irrigation is increasing in the eastern United States, thus creating increased competition for water in some of the more heavily populated regions of the country. "There are other looming environmental problems -- greater fragmentation of forest land into smaller and smaller plots; the decline of tree cover in our urban areas, which was analyzed in an article in yesterday's USA Today. And on a more global level, last week the World Commission on Water for the 21st Century reported that more than half of the world's rivers are polluted, with the Colorado River one of the main culprits. "Why and how have we managed to fall behind? One of the reasons is, quite simply, inadequate federal dollars. On a per acre basis, we spend five dollars on management of public lands for every one we spend on private conservation. The CRP is bumping up against its 36.4-million-acre ceiling, and we don't expect to enroll significant new acreage for several years. The Farmland Protection Program is underfunded. The Wetland Reserve Program is nearly full, and we have twice as many requests as we can satisfy. We also don't have the technical field personnel necessary to carry out our programs, since the conservation assistance workforce has been cut significantly since 1985. "But before we blame tight-fistedness for our conservation problems, let's remember that failure to come up with enough money is, in part, a reflection of the collective American attitude toward the land. "In 1935, galvanizing people toward a national conservation strategy was a much easier task. As a society, we felt more connected to the land. Farmers still comprised about a quarter of the labor force. Even many of those not directly involved in agriculture lived in or near rural areas, or worked in industries that supported farmers. "But over time, we have gradually withdrawn from the natural world, both at work and at play. Modern technologies like television and now the Internet have, to some extent, broken our bond with the land. In today's urbanized culture, many of us simply don't have the exposure to natural resources that would allow us to grasp the urgency of our conservation challenges. "Moreover, our relationship to the land is changing as we become an increasingly mobile and transient society. It used to be that most Americans spent their entire lives in one place. They felt vested in their community and in its land. But today we are a nation of travelers and re-locators, people who live in one place but are from another. Instead of the land being an integral part of our lives, it just happens to be the place where we're parked for the moment, a brief way station in life's journey. "To overcome these various obstacles and craft new conservation solutions, we have to continue to build partnerships, and we have to tap the power of grass roots activism. "The conservation pioneers of the 1930s understood this. They knew that their vision could be realized only if it was driven by local action...and not by top-down federal edict. The system of Conservation Districts that they established has been a lasting American success story. Today, some 15,000 elected or appointed volunteers give hundreds of thousands of hours each year to act as the liaison between government agencies and local land owners and land managers. "Later today, you'll hear directly from people with the expertise you can only get from confronting conservation issues on the ground. We have two case studies -- one from New York and another from Colorado -- of local residents banding together, building partnerships, taking advantage of government programs at all levels, and leveraging public dollars to protect their natural resources and maintain their economic viability. "Around the country, we see the greatest commitments and the most innovative conservation plans percolating from the bottom up. Nearly three- quarters of anti-sprawl ballot measures passed successfully in 1998. While the federal budget for USDA's Farmland Protection Program is only $35 million, the state of New Jersey has committed $1 billion over the next decade to preserving its agricultural lands. "Farmers, ranchers and foresters want to do the right thing. Their proximity to the land makes them our most conscientious land stewards. But we must give them the tools and resources they need to keep their operations economically and environmentally sustainable. "By empowering farmers in this way, we attack conservation problems before they even begin, and we accrue all kinds of benefits competitive rural economies; cleaner water; restored wetlands; enhanced flood control; healthier wildlife habitats; increased ecotourism, to name just a few. "But if we don't make these modest investments up front, we find ourselves spending a billion dollars down the road on a water filtration plant, for example, to fix a problem that has spun out of control. When it comes to conservation, an ounce of prevention is worth at least a pound of cure. "A landowner's actions don't occur in a vacuum. Environmental waste doesn't respect neat property boundaries. Whether you're a farmer dealing with animal waste or a suburban homeowner using garden fertilizer, the care you take in managing your property has an impact on quality of life for your neighbors and your community. "Even as we focus on local and regional conservation solutions, we have to understand the interdependence that is inherent in land management. As John Muir pointed out over a century ago: "When we try to pick anything out by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." The quality of running water in New York City, for example, has everything to do with upstate environmental practices. The lack of oxygen that is killing fish populations in the Gulf of Mexico can be traced in part to farmland runoff happening more than a thousand miles up the Mississippi River. "It all begins with every citizen understanding his or her responsibility to the environment. No one is exempt. If, as Woody Guthrie sang, "this land was made for you and me," then the stewardship of that land also falls to you and me. "Our treatment of natural resources is our legacy. An old Canadian Indian saying goes: "The real owners of the land are not yet born." Our grandchildren and their grandchildren won't remember the details of this or that farm program...or even what crops we planted and at what price they were sold. But they will know whether we cared properly for our natural resources...because they will either live with the consequences of our neglect, or reap the benefits of our stewardship. "The land is ageless, while we are just one humble generation along an infinite timeline. Yes, it is our responsibility to tend to short-term needs -- building homes, creating commercial opportunities, and so on. But we mustn't forget that we are only the trustees of the American landscape. It's not ours to keep and do with as we wish. It's only ours to hold for just a brief moment in time...and then to pass on in better condition than we found it. "We have the tools to do it. We know how to meet the conservation challenges of the new millennium. We have the most state-of-the-art environmental technologies at our disposal. We're familiar with all the best practices. "Now, we have to marshal the resources and forge the new partnerships to make it happen. And most of all, we have to muster the will to do what we know is the right thing. "That's what they were able to do at the beginning of this century. In 1908, President Roosevelt convened a Conference of Governors, devoted specifically to conservation issues. He later wrote of its success: "It is doubtful whether, except in time of war, any new idea of like importance has ever been presented to a nation and accepted by it with such effectiveness and rapidity, as was the case with this conservation movement when it was introduced to the American people by the Conference of Governors." "Given the challenges we face today, it's time to revisit our conservation commitment. And I believe that, just as was the case in 1908, the leadership has to come from the very top. So I am committed to working with Governor Vilsack to report to the President on the outcome of today's Summit, to recommend concrete steps to bring these conservation issues to the attention of the nation's governors and to begin a collaborative effort to construct meaningful and lasting solutions. "I look forward to our discussions today. Now, I would direct your attention to the screens before you for a brief video, which highlights some of the more important conservation challenges affecting the health of our private lands." #