Missoulian: Interior official urges cooperation on land restoration

Interior official urges cooperation on land restoration

By PERRY BACKUS of the Missoulian

September 26, 2006

Nature doesn't recognize the difference between public and private ground.

It doesn't see the lines on the map where one state starts and another ends. And it certainly doesn't know the difference between Forest Service green and Bureau of Land Management yellow.

So when the talk turns to restoration of natural ecosystems, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Interior Lynn Scarlett said its time to search out the partnerships that will allow for those efforts to occur across the landscape.

On Monday, Scarlett shared that vision as the keynote speaker of the 30th annual Public Land Law Conference at the University of Montana in a talk entitled “From Resource Damages to Restoration: An Evolution Toward Partnerships.”

Scarlett recently served as acting Interior secretary after the resignation of Gale Norton. She's been the deputy secretary since last year. Scarlett serves on the White House Cooperative Conservation Task Force and coordinates the Interior Department's environmental policy initiatives to implement President Bush's executive order on Cooperative Conservation.

On Monday night, Scarlett was espousing the virtues of the Bush program.

Cooperative Conservation works to bring citizens, communities and companies together to work on protecting and restoring the environment where they all live, work and play. It is incentive based, depends on collaboration and cooperation, has an experiential component and is entrepreneurial, Scarlett said.

There are already programs in place where government is reaching out to the private sector and good work is being accomplished on the ground, she said.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Partners for Wildlife Program is a good example.

For instance, that program reached out to Pennsylvania ranchers - “they literally went out and knocked on doors” - to put together an effort to fence off stream banks.

The result was dramatic improvement of many miles of riparian areas. Ranchers also witnessed a “drop of thousandfold” in stream-borne bacterial disease in their cattle.

“It's one of the best federal programs there is,” Scarlett said.

Cooperative Conservation is meant to work as a compliment to the traditional regulatory tools already in place, she said. Those regulatory rules and laws serve as a backstop, as well as providing a means for holding people accountable, Scarlett said.

But those rules often aren't much help on private lands.

About 85 percent of the species on the federal threatened and endangered list require habitat that's found on private lands. The Endangered Species Act doesn't include incentives that would inspire private landowners to be either good guardians or work to attract those species to their properties, Scarlett said.

People are often willing to step up and help if they have a chance.

In Alaska, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees noticed a decline in the number of albatross and suspected the drop had something to do with fishing. The service met with local fishermen, who agreed they could make some changes and help protect the birds.

“They worked together and found a way that the fishermen could continue fishing and still protect the albatross,” Scarlett said.

This year's Public Land Law Conference is titled “The Law of Ecosystem Restoration: National Policy Implications of the Clark Fork River Basin Natural Resource Damage Program.”

Experts from across the nation will discuss approaches to address the diverse needs and concerns of multiple stakeholders in affected areas. They also will examine the appropriate balance between assessing damages for past harms and fully restoring impacted resources.

The conference continues through Wednesday.

For more information, visit www.umt.edu/publicland/conference.htm.

Reporter Perry Backus can be reached at 523-5259 or at pbackus@missoulian.com