Secretary Norton and Other Top Interior Officials Will Call for
"New Environmentalism" at Earth Day 2002 Events

Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton and other top officials will fan out over the USA on Earth Day, Monday, April 22, to celebrate the land and wildlife administered by the Interior Department and call for a "new environmentalism" in which private citizens work in partnership with government as stewards of the land.

"This Earth Day, more than ever, Americans are ready to take action as self-motivated stewards of the environment we hand down to future generations," Norton says. "To accomplish this, we need a new environmentalism, based on the Four C's-Communication, Consultation, and Cooperation, all in the service of Conservation. At the heart of the Four C's is the fact that successful conservation calls for involving the people who live on, work on, and love the land."

Secretary Norton will speak at a Monday ceremony that will mark the construction of a new invasive plant control facility at the University of Florida in Davie. On Tuesday, the Secretary will address the Palm Beach Forum Club regarding environmental issues, including restoration of the Everglades, and will tour the Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge in Sanibel, Fla. She says, "Everglades restoration exemplifies the principles that originally inspired Earth Day and the volunteerism at Ding Darling exemplifies citizen stewardship."

Lynn Scarlett, Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget, will visit the Northern Chesapeake Bay in Maryland to showcase the DOI Coastal Program and Partners for Fish and Wildlife projects and the possibilities for applying President Bush's Cooperative Conservation Initiative in the region. At Holly Beach Farm, she will examine a multi-partnered conservation and restoration effort, including private land-owners, The Conservation Fund, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Maryland Department of Natural Resources, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service.

"These Maryland partnership projects set an example for the rest of the nation on Earth Day," Scarlett says. "Projects such as these point the way to the new environmentalism, a path away from conflict and toward consensus. This is the path this administration will

take." Scarlett says President Bush's proposed Cooperative Conservation Initiative will remove barriers to such citizen participation elsewhere. To fund this initiative, the president is proposing $100 million in challenge grants to landowners, land-user groups, conservation groups, and local and state governments for conservation projects.

Assistant Secretary for Water and Science Bennett Raley will be in Sacramento, California, on April 22, emphasizing the Secretary's Four C's at science symposium panel discussion on restoration efforts under the CALFED project, a huge public-private partnership critical to supplying the water that is the lifeblood of the West.

Assistant Secretary for Land & Minerals Management Rebecca Watson will tour two Virginia sites with ties to the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service and Bureau of Land Management. She will be joined at Runnymede Park in Herndon, Virginia, by Mayor Carol Bruce and other officials. Park officials recently submitted an application to receive funds from the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which comes from offshore royalties collected by MMS. The LWCF funds federal, state and local park and open space projects. The Bush administration has proposed historic amounts of funding for the LWCF. In Lorton, Virginia, Watson will help some school children plant trees at Meadowwood Farm, recently acquired by the BLM.

Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Neal McCaleb will join American Indian students at Sequoyah High School in Tahlequah, Oklahoma to participate in Earth Day activities on Monday. Chad Smith, Principle Chief of the Cherokee Nation, and McCaleb will present awards to students who participated in a large Earth Day project. The high school is a grant school operated by the Cherokee Nation with funding from the Interior Department's Bureau of Indian Affairs. McCaleb will also tour environmental science facilities and plant a tree on campus.

Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Fish, Wildlife, and Parks Craig Manson will return to his childhood home in New Mexico to celebrate Earth Day at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. He will be joined by children from Albuquerque's Zimmerly Elementary School. "I can't think of a more appropriate way to spend Earth Day than with New Mexico's future conservationists," Judge Manson says. He will also be the keynote speaker Monday evening at the National Hispanic Sustainable Energy Conference's Gala Banquet in Tucson, Arizona. "A vital part of our mission at the Department of the Interior is to make sure that local voices are heard in Washington," Manson notes. "We have set out to foster a 'New Environmentalism' that seeks to succeed through partnership and dialogue, and certainly we are working to include all communities in our efforts."

Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner John Keys is another top Interior official focusing on conservationists of the future for Earth Day 2002. At Cowell Elementary School in Denver, Colorado, 200 fourth and fifth graders will participate in an Earth Day activity in which they will learn about water conservation, water use, and the transportation and storage system for water in the West. Commissioner Keys will lead a discussion on how the students can help their public lands through volunteering.

Bureau of Land Management Director Kathleen Clarke also will join young people, participating in a field project with Boy Scouts at the Las Cienegas National Conservation Area, which is managed by the BLM Tucson, Arizona, field office. Her visit will emphasize the examples of citizen-based decision making and the Four C's exemplified by the development of the Las Cienegas NCA Resource Management Plan. The plan is the result of cooperation and collaboration among more than 300 citizens, interest groups and state and federal agencies.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Director Steve Williams will tour about 300 acres of restored wetlands and five streams at Willapa National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, presenting awards to partners who made the restoration possible. Providing an outstanding example of the Four C's are many partners. Those to be recognized include Friends of Willapa NWR, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, The Nature Conservancy, Willapa Bay Regional Fisheries Enhancement Group, U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resource Conservation Service, and Ducks Unlimited. The restored streams and wetlands contain endangered coho, Chinook and chum salmon, as well as steelhead and cutthroat trout.

National Park Service Director Fran Mainella will spend Earth Day at Fort Smith National Historic Site in Arkansas, a unit of the National Park System. She will also be doing a live television interview with CBS Channel 5 to answer questions from the public about Earth Day and administration conservation policies. The National Park Service is celebrating Earth Day with events nationwide, many of which involve students. At Kenai Fjords National Park in Alaska, for example, there will be a student art contest, and at Boston Harbor Island in Massachusetts, there will be a boat trip and nature walk for students.

Minerals Management Service Director R.M. "Johnnie" Burton will visit Assateague Island National Seashore in Maryland on Earth Day, April 22, to personally view the erosion severely impacting the barrier island's beaches. MMS recently signed an agreement with the National Park Service and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to use 2 million cubic yards of sand from the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf to restore the island.

U.S. Geological Survey Director Chip Groat will preview USGS work being conducted on a wide range of ecological issues at an April 23 Science Writers' open house in Gainesville, Florida. These issues include manatee population ecology, the impact of hurricanes on coastal systems, Everglades ecosystem restoration, the impact of invasive species and contaminants and sinkholes.

Office of Surface Mining Assistant Director Josie Blanchard, representing Director Jeff Jarrett, will honor science students in Lexington, Kentucky by planting trees at Squires Elementary School and introducing them to the OSM's interactive web site for education. By partnering with environmentally active youth, OSM looks forward to promoting the benefits of reclamation methods such as planting of trees on active and abandoned strip mines.

In addition to these activities around the nation, back at Interior headquarters in Washington, D.C. , Deputy Assistant Secretary Chris Kearney will address an Earth Day celebration at Rawlins Park.