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The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, which shares the Act's dual priorities of 

 protecting threatened wetland systems through acquisition and harnessing the private sector to 

 protect and restore wetlands on private lands, has often played a complementary role to the 

 Act on many of the same wetland conservation efforts. A good example of this partnership is 

 the Mad Island project on the Gulf Coast of Texas. The Texas coast was once one of the 

 most pristine and abundant habitats for migratory waterfowl, neotropical migratory birds, 

 millions of shorebirds, commerically important fisheries, and a wide diversity of other 

 wetland-dependant species. Agriculture, development, mineral exploration, salt-water 

 intrusion, invasion of exotic species, and sea-level rise have all combined to degrade this 

 valuable area. When a local landowner offered to sell at a greatly reduced price 3900 acres 

 of rice fields and coastal marsh, the Act provided two separate grants to The Nature 

 Conservancy to create a Mad Island coastal preserve and restore the area to its former high- 

 quality habitat. The Foundation stepped in and provided two grants to the Mad Island project 

 totalling $350,000. This is an active and effective partnership, with groups such as Ducks 

 Unlimited, the state of Texas, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Fish and 

 Wildlife Foundation, local rice growers, DOW Chemical, and the Environmental Protection 

 Agency all working together to restore the site. Since 1991, the reserve has doubled in size, 

 begun to restore its freshwater marsh system, reduced the harmful effects of salt-water 

 intrusion, controlled exotics with prescribed burning, and worked with local rice growers to 

 keep their winter rice fields flooded to mimic natural wetlands for waterfowl and shorebixd 

 use while allowing continued agricultural production in the area. 



Given this opportunity to reflect upon the Act and urge its reauthorization, we on the 

 Council must work harder to ensure that all wetland types and all wetlands-dependant species 

 in all comers of the United States, Canada, and Mexico are supported through this Act. We 

 support an amended Act that provides an increased level of funding for this program, which 

 continues to have more well-qualified and urgently needed projects than it can fund. We urge 

 the committee to consider a request for authorization of up to $40 million by the year 2000. 



We support an amended Act that relieves Mexico of the full burden of raising a 

 United States non-federal match, giving Mexico the time and flexibility to generate much- 

 needed projects and to avoid squelching their early efforts with overly cumbersome grant 

 requirements. The Foundation recognizes the critical role Mexico plays in the life cycle of 

 many North American migratory birds and the need to support every effort by the Mexican 

 government to preserve its unique and vital wetland systems. 



Finally, we support the efforts of Tennessee's Gary Myers and others tasked by the 

 Council to broaden the partnership base of the Act, recognizing that diverse partnerships are 

 what have made the Act so successful in such a short time. We have recently started the 

 process of reaching out to new partners, both as potential grantees and as funders. These 

 new partners share many of the same interests and work to protect the same critical habitats 

 that are high priorities under the Act. For example. Partners in Flight, initiated by the 

 Foundation, represents a network of 73 different partners in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico 

 dedicated to protecting neotropical migratory birds, many of whom are dependant on the 

 same kinds of wetland habitats that support waterfowl and shorebirds. If we have a fault with 

 the North American Wetlands Conservation Act, it is an administrative one. There has not 



