PALMER, Alaska, Aug. 25, 2005 - Agriculture Deputy Secretary Chuck Conner today announced that the first-ever Tribal Conservation District in Alaska that has been formed through a cooperative conservation agreement between the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Tyonek Native Corporation and the Native Village of Tyonek.

"Conservation is about cooperation between neighbors, communities and people and is based on the belief that those who depend on the land to make a living have a vested interest in its sound, sustainable stewardship," said Conner. "The Native Americans have always respected and valued the land and sought to live in harmony with nature. We are honored to work in partnership with the Tyonek Tribe through this new conservation district in Alaska."

By signing this agreement, the Native Village of Tyonek and the Tyonek Native Corporation and their Tyonek Tribal Conservation District will become the 26th Tribal Conservation District organized by USDA. The Tyonek Tribal Conservation District joins a host of Indian tribes that have elected to form officially-recognized tribal conservation district to maintain cooperative conservation relationships with USDA.

The Tyonek Tribal Conservation District will be the first federally-designated district Alaska; the 12 existing soil and water conservation districts are state-affiliated. The 40,000-acre Tyonek Tribal Conservation District boundaries stretch from Cook Inlet on the south, just beyond Chelatna Lake on the north, east to the Susitna River and west to Rainy Pass.

Like all soil and water conservation districts, the Tyonek Tribal Conservation District will be comprised of a board of local land users and will help coordinate assistance from all available sources -- public and private, local, state and federal -- in an effort to develop locally driven solutions to natural resource concerns.

"This is an exciting development for Alaska," said State Conservationist Robert Jones of the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. "We are happy to see the development of tribal districts to manage and conserve natural resources at the local level."

Later this month, USDA, along with other federal agencies, will participate in the White House Conference on Cooperative Conservation in St. Louis, Mo., August 29-31, 2005 to provide a forum for a diverse group of leaders to exchange information. The conference, convened by the White House Council on Environmental Quality, will identify innovative and effective approaches to promoting cooperative conservation. USDA has been a conservation leader since it was founded in 1862, and serves as a steward of our nation's 193 million acres of national forests and rangelands while encouraging voluntary efforts to protect soil, water, and wildlife on an estimated 1.4 billion acres of America's private lands. For more information on the conference, access http://www.conservation.ceq.gov. For more information on USDA's conservation programs, access http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/.