of inland states so that you educate 

 not only members of Congress from 

 those states, but state and local of- 

 ficials as well. I suspect that the 

 vast majority of residents of those 

 areas do not have the faintest idea 

 where shrimp come from or how impor- 

 tant it is to preserve their nursery 

 habitat. 



Let me hasten to add, however, 

 that all the ignorance of our impor- 

 tant coastal zone is not restricted 

 to inland areas. A number of years 

 ago, the Texas Parks and Wildlife 

 Commission held a public hearing on 

 how much it should charge for removal 

 of bay bottoms. During the course of 

 the hearing, one man who actually 

 lived on the coast questioned why the 

 state should be involved. He asked 

 the question: "What good is that 

 stinking old marsh, anyway?" Dr. Dan 

 Willard, a botany professor at the 

 University of Texas, was sitting up 

 front, and one could almost see the 

 hackles rise on his neck. He re- 

 plied: "I would like for the gentle- 

 man to know that, acre for acre, 

 'that stinking old marsh' produces 

 more protein than the richest acre of 

 farmland in the Midwest." 



While many members of Congress 

 may not fully know the value of our 

 coastal wetlands, I suspect that many 

 of our problems lie with the paro- 

 chial positions taken by some mem- 

 bers. We have too few members who 

 take a broad national overview of 

 issues which we deal with every week. 

 Their first, and sometimes only 

 question is: "How does it affect my 

 constituency?" For instance, today 

 much of our energy is being produced 

 from the continental shelf, and even 

 a greater share probably will come 

 from that area in the future. Inland 

 officials read where the Sierra Club 

 or Audubon Society has sued to pro- 

 hibit drilling for oil and gas in 

 an estuary. Their first reaction is 



that environmentalists are trying to 

 keep constituents from driving their 

 gas-guzzling automobiles and trying 

 to freeze them in the dark just to 

 preserve the habitat of a dickey 

 bird. Which gets me now to the 

 second phase of my presentation. 



I have long appreciated the 

 beauty of a saltwater marsh and the 

 stillness of an East Texas hardwood 

 bottom. But in recent years I have 

 come to the conclusion that if we are 

 to preserve any of such beauty, we 

 almost have to put a price tag on it. 

 It is too difficult to place a dollar 

 mark on the value that one derives 

 from the aesthetic enjoyment of the 

 outdoors. It should not be that way, 

 but it is. Tellico Dam has shown us 

 that we must have economic justifica- 

 tion for preservation, and in most 

 cases I think we can justify our po- 

 sitions. Certainly we can when it 

 comes to protecting the oceans and 

 their bounties. 



One of the first concepts to be 

 recognized when we begin to look at 

 the dollar value of any resource is 

 the long-term gain vs. the short- 

 term. The first major battle I be- 

 came involved in was in 1963 when the 

 Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission 

 amended two long-held rules on 

 dredging of commercial oyster shell 

 in Galveston Bay, posing threats to 

 our oyster fishermen. Our argument 

 then, and it still is a valid one, is 

 that we must calculate the value of 

 those reefs on a long-term basis, 

 producing oysters year in and year 

 out, and compare their value on a 

 short-term basis as a component for 

 cement or chemical products. We ar- 

 gued that while their value for the 

 latter may be quite high, if we kept 

 the reefs intact and productive, then 

 they would continue to produce 

 oysters decade after decade, just as 

 they have for thousands of years in 

 the past. Their value, then, on a 



