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• First, administrative remedies should be exhausted prior to consideration of 

 legislative changes to refuge and waterfowl provisions of existing law. 



• Second, legislative changes to refiige and waterfowl provisions must be the product of 

 a consensus among all refuge stakeholders in the Central Valley. 



• Third, management of watershed and refuges must not be weakened and, in some 

 cases, must by improved. 



• Fourth, secure funding for habitat and refuge restoration enhancement and acquisition 

 must be maintained and improved. 



We have reviewed H.R. 1906 through the prism of these principles and, in our 

 opinion, several changes are needed to the bill as introduced to avoid particular hardships 

 for habitat, refuges, and the private wetland landowner. We also want to point out that 

 between the early drafts of H.R. 1906 which we were given the opportunity to review and 

 the final bill, significant improvements were made in the interests of habitat and refuges. 

 In particular, early drafts would have eliminated the guaranteed floor of delivering at least 

 seventy-five percent of contracted water. The waterfowl community considered this 

 provision to be a substantial step backward. To their credit, the proponents of H.R. 1906 

 eliminated this provision. 



Despite these improvements from earlier drafts of H.R. 1906, the waterfowl 

 community believes that further changes are necessary. Today, I would like to discuss a 

 few such improvements in detail, Mr. Chairman. H.R. 1906 requires the Secretary to 

 reduce water deliveries to Central Valley refuges and wildlife habitat areas by up to 

 twenty-five percent whenever reductions are imposed on agricultural water service 

 contractors. Unlike other provisions of H.R. 1906 which provide the Secretary with more 

 management discretion, this provision provides him or her with less. The potential 

 impact of a mandatory reduction could be devastating not just for California wetland, 

 waterfowl and sporting interests but for the entire Pacific Flyway because, in a very real 

 sense, this provision would work to make a bad situation worse. 



Mr. Chairman, the reduction of water envisioned in this provision would occur 

 when water conditions in the Central Valley are very tight. The purpose of the provision 

 is to require refuges to reduce water if the supply to the agricultural water service 

 contractors is reduced. Mr. Chairman, the Grasslands are the neighbors of many water 

 service contractors and some of our landowners are water service contractors themselves. 

 We do not take lightly the impact of water reduction on our agricultuiral neighbors. 

 However, the impact on refuges is, in most cases, far more serious than the impact on 

 agriculture. With only five percent of California's wetlands remaining, every acre of 

 Central Valley wetland must be intensely managed in an attempt to recreate the benefits 



