New Program to Restore 100,000 Acres of Wetlands and Buffers on Chesapeake Bay

(20 October, 1997 ? Washington) The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) praised the approval today by US Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman and Vice President Al Gore of the Maryland Chesapeake Bay Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program. The program will restore 100,000 acres of wetlands, forest buffers and rapidly eroding lands around streams that enter into the Chesapeake Bay to filter polluted farm runoff and recreate habitat.

“This is the largest scientific and fully funded plan to restore the wetlands and natural boundaries to an estuary or a large river ever approved. It is large enough to place a natural buffer between farmland and every stream in Maryland,” said EDF executive director Fred Krupp, who participated in the announcement of the program on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay today. “Vice President Gore and Secretary Glickman deserve great praise for committing to

pursue as many Conservation Reserve Enhancement Programs as possible to restore ecosystems around the country.”

“The program combines state efforts with the massive, fully funded, federal Conservation Reserve Program to achieve a degree of environmental restoration neither Maryland nor the Agriculture Department could achieve alone,” said EDF senior attorney Tim Searchinger, who first proposed the concept of Enhancement Programs to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) in June of 1996.

“Through Enhancement Programs the federal government helps states to implement restoration plans they have developed with intensive science and citizen input. State funds are used to assure wetlands and forests remain beyond the 10 to 15 year temporary benefits of traditional Conservation Reserve Programs, and to fund more complicated and valuable forms of restoration,” said Searchinger.

Beginning in 1996 Searchinger worked with Governor Glendening of Maryland, Governor Bob Edgar (R. Illinois) and Governor Arne Carlson (R. Minnesota) to submit pilot programs to serve as models for USDA. “The program has support from both Democrats and Republicans,” said Krupp. “The other two Enhancement programs each contemplate restoring wetlands, forests and prairies on roughly 200,000 acres of chronically flooded land along the Illinois and Minnesota River.”