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Mr. HocHBRUECKNER. At this point we will hear from Mr. Scott 

 Sutherland, Director of Federal regulations for Ducks Unlimited. 

 Mr. Sutherland. 



STATEMENT OF SCOTT SUTHERLAND 



Mr. Sutherland. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to 

 come before you today to talk about the partnership between the 

 500,000 members of my organization and the Fish and Wildlife 

 Foundation. 



Ducks Unlimited has been working on wildlife habitat protection 

 and conservation for 55 years. In our earlier days, we concentrated 

 on raising money here in the United States from our members and 

 doing habitat work with that money chiefly up in Canada on the 

 bird breeding grounds in the prairies there. Most of that work was 

 done as a sole entity with Ducks Unlimited. 



More recently in the 1980's and 1990's, we have expanded our 

 work on habitat in the United States and increasingly done 

 projects in conjunction with partners. 



It seems that in today's world of conservation, partnerships be- 

 tween various members of the public and private sector are the 

 route of making limited resources both on the government side, 

 and on the private side, go much further and accomplish joint 

 goals. The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation has been instru- 

 mental in bridging that gap, acting as a catalyst in forming those 

 partnerships and is one of Ducks Unlimited's finest partners. 



The record of the Foundation shows that they have been pio- 

 neers in many areas that need attention, far beyond the scope of 

 the things that Ducks Unlimited works on but that we are support- 

 ive of nonetheless. 



From their work on writing the annual needs assessment of a va- 

 riety of Federal agencies, creation of the Partners in Flight pro- 

 gram, their support in training and action, and putting that train- 

 ing into action for Federal wildlife professionals is unprecedented. 

 It is ground breaking and very, very commendable. 



The bulk of the work that Ducks Unlimited has done with the 

 Foundation involves the North American Waterfowl Management 

 Plan which you heard mentioned several times. The Foundation, 

 along with Ducks Unlimited and the State governments, as Mr. 

 Myers mentioned, initiated a program and encouraged all of us to 

 share the burden of restoring wetlands habitat in the three coun- 

 tries of North America in order to ensure continued population of 

 migratory birds and other wetlands wildlife. 



Coincidently, the work that Ducks Unlimited does with the 

 Foundation also helps accomplish goals on some of the other 

 project area initiatives that the Foundation has. An example might 

 be the tremendous neotropical and shorebird benefits realized on 

 the huge number of projects that we have done with the Founda- 

 tion, quite a number of projects in the southern United States and 

 western United States. 



We have done some large scale projects with the Foundation. 

 Some of them have been mentioned. 



The ACE Basin that Mike talked about, we are very proud of 

 that. The Foundation is instrumental in protecting a 25-mile-long 



