Potomac and Penobscot: best conservation lesson

The Potomac River, which flows from the mountains of West Virginia past Washington into the Chesapeake Bay, symbolizes what America has done right over the past 30 years to clean up our environment and restore wildlife populations.

In the 1960s, the Potomac was little more than a sewer. The water was so polluted that its fish and wildlife died off and people who fell into the river by accident had to get a tetanus shot. After Congress passed landmark laws like the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act in the late 1960s and early ’70s, the river rebounded. Today, visitors to the nation’s capital can see bald eagles snatching fish out a river renowned as a world-class bass fishery.

Across America, these landmark environmental laws have made rivers like the Potomac cleaner, eliminated much of the smog over our cities, and brought back species like the bald eagle and the peregrine falcon.

In many ways, however, we are reaching the limit of what these laws can do. The reason? Laws and regulations can prevent harm to the environment and to wildlife but they cannot compel enthusiasm and creativity in restoring our wetlands, waterways and land. Punishment for law violators can enforce minimum standards of behavior, and this is important. But going beyond mere compliance to achieve outstanding results takes a different approach.

If we are going to continue to make progress in the 21st century, we need a new approach built on the premise that successful conservation is always partnership between the government and the people. Rather than depending on command-and-control laws, we need to empower the American people to take conservation into their own hands.

That’s where the Penobscot River comes in. Anyone happening by the banks of the Penobscot in Old Town on a beautiful fall morning last month would have witnessed an excellent example of the kind of partnership that is needed.

Standing in the shadow of the Milford Dam were executives of a power company that owns the dams on the river, environmentalists and sportsmen who have tried to get the dams torn down, the governor of Maine, representatives of state and federal agencies responsible for the fish in the river, and members of a Native American tribe that has fished the river for 10,000 years.

This diverse group announced a historic $25 million agreement to remove two dams and alter a third to re-open 500 miles of habitat on the Penobscot to Atlantic salmon, American shad and other native fish.

Hammered out over three years, the deal is a win for everyone involved. The power company, PPL Corp., will receive $25 million in reimbursement for the dams and the right to increase production at other dams to make up for the lost power. Environmental and sportsmen groups achieve their goal restoring historic fish passage on the Penobscot. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sees the reopening of vital habitat for the imperiled Atlantic salmon. The Penobscot Indian Nation gets the restoration of a culturally and economically important fishery.

Finally, all the citizens of Maine benefit from a healthier river and a better quality of life while continuing to enjoy the hydroelectric power the river produces. In recent years the Interior Department has found that, given an opportunity, Americans are more than ready to become citizen conservationists and volunteers. For example, a program called Partners for Fish and Wildlife managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been wildly successful. It offers landowners technical assistance and financial support if they want to restore important wildlife habitat on their property.

So far, landowners have voluntarily restored 670,000 acres of wetlands, 1.2 million acres of upland habitat and 5,100 miles of streams. At President Bush’s request, Congress recently approved a 13 percent budget increase in the program for 2004, which will allow at least 1,200 more landowners on the program’s long waiting list to participate.

The president also is using a similar approach to enhance protection of endangered species. Through new federal programs modeled after a successful Texas program, we provide grants and technical assistance to landowners who restore habitat for at-risk wildlife on private lands. In doing so, we hope to shift the focus away from mandates and toward partnerships that empower citizen-conservationists.

Teddy Roosevelt once said “a nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased and not impaired in value.” Different circumstances will always require different solutions, but the people of Maine should be proud that, in Roosevelt’s words, they have “behaved well” and established a model of conservation partnership on the Penobscot River that others around the country can follow.

Gale A. Norton is the secretary of the interior.