Remarks Prepared For Delivery By
The Honorable Gale Norton
Secretary of the Interior
Gateway Community Partnerships for Tourism and Conservation
December 4, 2002
Introduction by Mark McDermott, Chair, Western States Tourism Policy Council and director, Arizona Office of Tourism.
I am delighted to be here with all our partners in this conference: the Western States Tourism Policy Council, 11 federal agencies, the National Association of Counties and the National Alliance of Gateway Communities. This is a great opportunity to share a wealth of knowledge and experience.
Gateway communities often are the welcome wagon for our National Parks, wildlife refuges, monuments and public lands. Tourists and visitors see you before they see us.
Both the Gateway communities and the federal land destinations are changing, in some cases dramatically. Those changes impact all that we do.
To begin with the population rate in the West is exploding. The rate of population growth across the US is about 13 percent according to the U.S. Census bureau. But in the West the average is almost twice that and in several states it is much higher. Nevada for example has a 66 % population growth and Arizona's is at 40%.
Since most of your are Westerners, you know that the Department of the Interior manages one-fifth of the land in the United States along with the resources the public lands provide. Most of that land is in the West.
I've borrowed here from Mark McDermott who explained to the Western Governor's Association back in June that tourism is the primary export industry of many of our Western states and the region as a whole.
He said it brings in massive spending from outside the region and increases demand for local goods and services.
By necessity, the Interior Department is in the tourist business.
As populations move to new areas, new pressures on the natural landscape emerge. Citizens are looking for increased recreational opportunities on public lands, which challenges our land managers to provide high-quality opportunities while maintaining resource protection.
Increased population leads to increased urbanization, which leads to rising land use, cross-jurisdictional problems and growing use of facilities.
The changes make it harder to keep the West the way it was-its rural qualities after all, are what people want to see. The changes put enormous pressure on all of us to provide services. Some of the costs are covered by increased sales and hotel taxes for the communities and recreation fees for Interior.
But the revenues don't always cover costs. Neither the communities nor the Interior Department are equipped to handle it all alone. We recognize that federal land managers must be partners with the nearby communities, businesses and local friends groups. Together we can plan for the visitors and offer them the best overall experience while making certain we protect our resources for others to enjoy in the future.
The new pressures require that we avoid some past pitfalls in the interaction between citizens and land managers. I've borrowed a story from Greek mythology to illustrate that interaction.
There was a character named Procrustes, (Proh KRUS teez) who was one of Poseidon's sons-sort of the black sheep. He kept a house by the side of the road to Attica, where he offered hospitality to passing strangers. They were invited in to dine and stay the night in a very special bed.
He would describe it to the unsuspecting as a bed that had a unique property: It exactly fit the person laying down on it.
Once inside, Procrustes would rob the person and tie them to the bed where they learned its secret. He stretched the person on the rack if that person was too short for the bed and chopped off his legs if he was too long. Thus it fit the person exactly.
The message here is that, yes one-size-fits-all can be made to work, but there are unintended consequences.
At Interior, we think there is a better approach. We are on the cutting edge (no pun intended) of using collaborative and community-based approaches to land management.
We know that each community is different in geography, resource needs and the personalities within the communities. However, we also know there is a list of key ingredients for constructive collaboration.
Experts are finding that results oriented collaboration is best started at the local level, in a specific place regarding the lands around that place, and not centered on broad public policy disputes.
Managing hundreds of millions of acres is a huge challenge from providing rugged and pristine wilderness to multiple use that produces one-third of the coal, oil and gas this nation produces.
For each acre, we have to determine what style of management best fits that land.
We are looking at ways to work with communities to fit our land management program into matching their local needs-not the other way around. Working together, we can all pitch in to meet the needs of communities and visitors.
The Moab Information Center in Utah, illustrates a project where everyone pitched in. It is a joint effort of the Grand County Travel Council, the Canyonlands Natural History Association, and the Moab Offices of the BLM, National Park Service, and Forest Service.
Grand County leases the building to the Canyonlands Natural History Association, which pays for it through the sale of books, maps and items at the bookstore.
The center is a focal point for visitors and community members alike and has served as a major factor in Moab's downtown revitalization. Visitation has increased to Canyonlands and Arches National Parks, but not nearly as dramatically as it has on BLM lands.
It used to be that visitor impacts were a concern only on Park Service lands.
Twenty years ago, the BLM near Moab had 130,000 visitors per year. Today it is, 2 million visitors.
Twenty years ago, the BLM had 30 campsites at Moab-today they have more than 400.
The visitor center is a necessity.
Across the country, 30 years ago BLM had more than 300 recreation sites to manage--now they have a lot more than 3000. That is more than a 1,000 percent increase.
Some of you may have heard me say before that the Four C's is a guide to how I want Interior to move forward. They stand for communication, consultation and cooperation, all in the service of conservation.
At the heart of the Four C's is the belief that for conservation to be successful, we must involve the people who live on, work on, and love the land. I am committed to working with all of you in partnership toward the goal of managing our federal lands more effectively and promoting recreational activities on them.
Such partnerships promote individualized solutions that are a better fit for the local communities.They make more sense than stretching, and chopping off limbs in a Procrustean-style decision.
One program that is near and dear to my heart is one that allows land managers to better work with you in local communities. We proposed the Cooperative Conservation Program. It allows private landowners to apply for cost-sharing grants to do voluntary projects that advance the health of the land and benefit people and wildlife. These would not be mandates from Washington, but voluntary efforts to work together for conservation.
The entire federal budget is bogged down at the moment, but Congress agreed to the core elements of what we were trying to do in this program. They have proposed to give DOI's three land management agencies, additional resources to participate in conservation partnerships.
The best way I can describe what we want to do with this program is to describe how public/private partnerships already work in a Friends program here in New Mexico.
For the past 15 years, citizens and businesses in Socorro have worked hand-in-hand with Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge to hold a week-long celebration of the return of thousands of sandhill cranes and arctic geese to the refuge in October/November.
One of the driving forces behind the festival is the Friends of Bosque del Apache, an organization of local citizens that coordinates volunteer work at the refuge and works to promote it.
Formed in 1994, the Friends group has provided funds for habitat restoration -replacing exotic species with native plants. They recently constructed a Marsh Boardwalk that allows visitors to tour a sensitive area of the refuge without harming the resource.
The Friends group at Socorro is the kind of partnership that is part of new environmentalism. The boardwalk sounds like an excellent, creative way to achieve two goals-visitor access and resource protection-at the same time.
Through the Cooperative Conservation Initiative we embrace friends groups, local environmental groups, chambers of commerce, resorts, tourism organizations-to accomplish on-the-ground conservation projects.
We are asking your support for programs like the Cooperative Conservation Initiative and by the same token, extend our support to you for your efforts before the Congress
An example is the Gateway Communities Cooperation Act. I know Congressman Radanovich spoke to you about his bill and plans to re-introduce it. Interior supports the legislation that will make gateway communities stronger and more effective partners with federal land agencies.
You can be proud of the work your groups have accomplished with the memoranda of understanding with multiple federal agencies that support gateway communities. We are pleased to be partners in all your efforts.
But there are challenges ahead. We want to continue to take part in conferences such as this and to reach out to employ the 4 C's wherever possible.
Another example of cooperation between us is the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial. It starts early in 2003 by recalling the planning process between President Thomas Jefferson and his aide, Merriwether Lewis. It was an heroic plan to find a northwest passage and to discover the mysteries of this vast land.
Jefferson's first act was to go to Congress to seek an appropriation of $2500. for the expedition. When the trek was over and the accounting was done, the cost was closer to $40,000.----- There were government cost overruns even in those days.
Many of your states were part of the Lewis and Clark route and will be integrally involved as the commemoration moves forward. It is a wonderful chance to enhance tourism from both at home and abroad, and to work together toward a common goal of educating the Nation and encouraging them to visit the sites of our history.
We want to be partners in this effort and we view it as an excellent opportunity to enhance volunteerism as well.
Interior is blessed with 200,000 volunteers, a number that has doubled over the last ten years. That number is almost three times the number of paid employees in the Department.
The high quality work they perform results in significant savings to the American people and allows us to offer more programs and services to our nation's citizens. For example, last year, volunteers for the BLM, the Park Service and Fish and Wildlife Service provided combined total service valued at about $98 million.
Volunteers help maintain and sustain our national parks, national wildlife refuges and fish hatcheries.
They serve as campground hosts, clear trails, help with seasonal bird surveys, collect new information for maps, and assist with many other day-to-day activities. We can't perform all of our work without them.
President Bush has asked all Americans to volunteer at least two years or 4,000 hours to service during their lifetimes. At Interior this seems a natural evolution. The lands under our management belong to every American. Every American should want to see them used and not abused.
The President wants to foster a culture of service, citizenship and responsibility, which will necessitate new partnerships between government, the non-profit sector, businesses, schools and other community institutions.
We will begin an initiative in the new year to promote volunteer participation at the grassroots level. We intend to create new opportunities and partnerships with state, local and tribal governments. We look forward to working with you as this initiative takes shape.
Volunteerism and working at the local level are all part of new environmentalism as put forward by this Administration. It is an effort to change the environmental communication from long-distance name calling to productive involvement and interaction.
The differences between long-distance political debates and productive negotiations can be illustrated by reaction to the President's Healthy Forest Initiative.
To hear critics describe it, the Healthy Forest Initiative is an undercover effort to move the West back to a logging economy.
In reality, it is an effort to protect western communities. It is an effort to allow you to have a tourist economy near public lands.
Tourists don't visit burned-out forests or camp at burned over BLM lands.
I don't have to remind you how devastating this year's fire season was on both resources and tourism. More than 6 million acres burned-that is an area larger than the entire state of New Jersey.
While fire is a natural part of a forest ecosystem, these fires were beyond natural. They burned hotter and faster and they caused serious damage.
As you well know, thousands of communities near Federal land are at risk from fire. Some groups are claiming that we only need to worry about the wildland urban interface areas.
That doesn't protect watersheds or critical habitat or endangered species in the rest of public lands.
Hundreds of communities have been affected by wildland fires either through evacuation, or tragically, destruction of homes or businesses this year. In Colorado alone, 77,000 people were forced to temporarily evacuate their homes. Others included Show Low, Arizona, Rodeo Chedeski, Cave Junction, or Biscuit. This is important for communities like yours.
Working together, federal and local firefighters controlled 99.7% of these fires on the initial attack. We are doing our job and we have been able to put many more resources into firefighting thanks to the President's budget that gave us $750 million more than the record fire year of 2000.
But the extensive drought, the dense fuel loads and disease and insect infestation allowed some fires to explode. A century of fire suppression and poor forest management has left them overgrown and subject to intense, unnatural wild fires that destroy everything in their paths.
We have tools available to us: prescribed fires and mechanical thinning. During the height of the fire season, President Bush was able to illustrate how deadly fires burned in the Squires fire in Oregon where no treatment had taken place. Where there was thinning, the fire burned low to the ground, swept through quickly and left no lasting damage.
This summer, President Bush sent his "Healthy Forests Initiative," to Congress to address this crisis. The Congress did not act on it.
More than 190 million acres of forests will be at high risk of catastrophic blazes when fire season comes around again next summer. Faced with such a threat, it is short-sighted not to take action.
The President directed Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman and me to work with the White House to improve the regulatory process to ensure more timely decisions, greater efficiency and better results in reducing catastrophic wildfires by restoring forest health.
He also asked Congress to facilitate fuels reduction with legislation that will expedite forest health projects, especially in high priority areas. He asked them to allow federal agencies to enter into long-term stewardship contracts with the private sector, nonprofit organizations and local communities. Contractors would keep wood products in exchange for the service of thinning trees and brush and removing dead wood.
The President's proposal asks that something be done about process gridlock or "analysis paralysis." And it proposed to change the way we compare short-term risk against long-term benefits. There is no question that a prescribed burn or a mechanically thinned area has negative short-term environmental effects. But if, over the longer term, that work makes the area safer from catastrophic fire, the long-term benefits can outweigh short-term impacts.
We worked with Western Governors and governments to come up with a Comprehensive Strategy for fire and we will implement it with help from intergovernmental and stakeholder groups at all levels.
It makes no sense to fiddle while the forests are burning. We need to take action and you may soon see some administrative changes toward our goals.
Through all your efforts and ours, we will be better able to create healthy forests, to protect our resources, to work well with gateway communities, create new volunteers and to enhance the experience of all visitors to America's backyard. I'm looking forward to working with all of you toward these goals.
Thank you.