North American Wetlands Conservation Extension Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. WITTMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise also in strong support of H.R. 925, the North American Wetlands Conservation Extension Act. And I would also like to thank Mr. Thompson for his extraordinary leadership on this legislation and for his service on the Migratory Bird Conservation Commission.

As he spoke about, he has a passion to make sure that we are preserving that habitat we all value and the wildlife that lives there--not just the migratory birds, but all of the other life that it supports. It is critically important that we continue this program. It is one of the truly successful stories in conservation in our Nation, and, again, I want to thank Mr. Thompson for his leadership.

This bill works to reduce wetlands disappearance and to conserve migratory bird habitat. The good part about it is that we, in setting aside this land now, predominantly use conservation easements as a mechanism to do that.

I understand the chairman's concern about more acres of land in the Federal inventory and the dollars that it takes to maintain that land. We absolutely have to address that. But the good news here is that many of these acres are in conservation easements, which means they stay in private ownership. They just have an easement from the Federal Government to maintain that critical habitat.

That really is the best of both worlds as well as leveraging private dollars with this. What a great example of how to leverage public dollars with private dollars.

Several years ago, the duck hunters, en masse, came and said: Listen, we want to increase the duck stamp fee so that we can make sure we have the necessary dollars to match the Federal dollars that go into this program. It was extraordinarily successful.

People who enjoy the resources, from bird watchers to hunters and others, have said: We want to put more of our dollars into it. And, again, we are using their tax dollars to leverage those private dollars for this critical habitat.

Our wetlands across the United States are Mother Nature's filter for the water that comes off the land and also Mother Nature's nurseries for all that critical wildlife that lives there, both fish, and birds, and other critters that are critical to these environments. They are disappearing at an alarming rate. This bill helps us stem the loss of those wetlands.

As I have said, the leveraging of private resources is critical. I think Congress should be doing more to identify these types of Federal programs like NAWCA that have proven to be successful. NAWCA matches funding that then contributes to conservation success in our communities. Let's do more of that.

Protecting and restoring and managing wetland habitats is critically important. I would argue, of all of the habitats out there, this habitat, on the scale of value, has the most value across, not just the United States, but across the planet. We have to do more to make sure we are preserving that.

It is critical that we invest efficiently to conserve these areas. Investing efficiently means leveraging that one public dollar to three private dollars, and we want to make sure that we are preserving these areas for use for future generations.

Unfortunately, wetlands continue to disappear at an alarming rate. This helps stem the disappearance of those wetlands.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to support this legislation.

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