Boost conservation-program funding; help workers enjoy the outdoors

[Omaha Steve]

Cross posted in Labor

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080331/OPINION01/803310306/-1/SPORTS0803

Richard Trumka • March 31, 2008

Whether it's bow season or fishing season, you'll find me - and millions of other union members - out in the woods, enjoying this country. That's one reason we've got our eyes on Congress as it considers reauthorizing the farm bill, a bill that most people know will help farmers and ranchers.

What is less well known is that this bill also allocates much-needed funds to protecting land from development.

Why is the AFL-CIO, the federation representing 10 million working men and women, worried about conservation in the farm bill? Because working people across the country hunt and fish, including roughly 70 percent of union members in the building and construction trades. The farm bill has a huge impact on the quality of life of working people when they're away from work. The AFL-CIO is joining the nation's leading sportsmen and conservation organizations to make conservation a national priority. As a nation, we value our wide-open-spaces and time spent outside.

A recent report by the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership should be our blueprint in being stewards of our land. The report calls for robust funding of the cornerstone programs within the farm bill that maintain healthy fish and wildlife populations in wetland and grassland habitats. And it calls for the inclusion of an open-fields provision, a new program that would provide $20 million in federal funding for states to establish and expand private land "walk-in" access programs for hunters and anglers.

These conservation programs would be the largest federal investment to conservation to date. More than half the landscape of the lower 48 states would benefit from this investment. The programs are critical to maintaining an environment for fish and wildlife to thrive. And still, the Conservation Title is only 7 percent of farm-bill funding.

The process of renewing the farm bill began in Congress more than a year ago, yet Congress has whittled away at the funds for conservation, and the Bush administration is blocking the effort to reauthorize it.

FULL story at link.