Raven raises cattle on her 700-acre property, but she also takes care of the wildlife habitat, undertaking projects to conserve the streams, uplands and forests on her land. Local high school science students visit her property to learn from her ecological restoration efforts.

This year, she applied for and received a $21,000 grant under President George W. Bush’s new Private Stewardship Grant Program to increase populations of endangered gray and Indiana bats by protecting and restoring their habitat.

The funding will allow Raven to restore and manage riparian areas, protect bat caves and forest areas with fences and eliminate non-native plant species such as honeysuckle and Russian olive.

"I have children and hope to have grandchildren," Raven said. "I want them to be inspired by the beauties and complexities of nature."

Himself a rancher and landowner, President Bush first proposed the Private Stewardship Grant Program in June 2000, when he was Texas governor. His experience told him successful conservation is a partnership between the American people and their government. If conservation is to flourish, it must spring primarily from the work of those like Raven, who live and work on the land and value its wildlife.

Last week, the president’s vision came to fruition when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service awarded $9.4 million in grants to landowners and local groups in 43 states. Empowered by the grants, these citizen stewards will apply a caring hand to lands and waters to benefit endangered, threatened and other at-risk species found on private lands.

Private lands are essential to imperiled species, providing vital habitat for more than half the species listed under the Endangered Species Act.

The caretakers of these lands provide commitment, expertise and the kind of on-the-ground, special knowledge that cannot be found anywhere else.

The program requires at least a 10 percent upfront grant match by the landowner, but the expectation is that the federal share will leverage long-term conservation far in excess of the original cost.

Ranchers from the Malpai Borderlands Group in southwest New Mexico and southeast Arizona, for example, are using a $100,000 stewardship grant to improve habitat for 34 federally listed, state-listed or at-risk species, including the northern aplomado falcon and the southwestern willow flycatcher.

A local conservation group in Washington state is restoring habitat on private lands bordering the Columbia River for the bald eagle and other wildlife.

Landowners in Nebraska are undertaking projects to help endangered whooping cranes while five towns on Long Island, N.Y., and The Nature Conservancy are combining their efforts to protect beach habitat on private lands for the threatened piping plover.

No single private stewardship project will address all of the needs of at-risk species in the United States, but together they provide significant benefits.

This is the heart of cooperative conservation. While we have made great strides in the past 30 years in cleaning up our environment, restoring wildlife habitat and conserving threatened and endangered species, there are limits to what we can do through government regulation and mandates.

Instead of dictating to landowners how to conserve species and protect habitat on their land, the government needs to empower them through grants and voluntary partnerships.

The Private Stewardship Grant Program is only the latest such partnership program available to landowners. I recently announced $34.8 million in grants to states under the president’s new Landowner Incentive Program, allowing states to develop their own programs to enhance habitat for at-risk species.

These cost-share grants will support innovative partnerships with landowners in 42 states.

Likewise, the president is asking Congress for a 24 percent budget increase in the Partners for Fish and Wildlife program, which provides funding and technical help to landowners to conserve habitat.

Over the years, landowners have voluntarily restored 640,000 acres of wetlands, 1 million acres of upland habitat and 4,700 miles of streams under this program.

In partnership with Americans like Tamra Englehorn Raven, we will prove there is no better conservation resource than the people who live on and love the land they call home.

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Gale Norton is secretary of the interior. She is scheduled to speak June 17 in Columbia to the Outdoor Writers Association of America.