For Immediate Release

June 9, 2004

INTERIOR BILL BOOSTS PARK OPERATIONS,
FUNDS STATE SALMON PROGRAMS

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The House Appropriations Committee today approved a boost in funding for the National Park Service that will address the shortfall that has reduced staffing at Olympic National Park and other National Parks and historic places, U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks said Wednesday.

            Rep. Dicks, who serves as the ranking Democratic member of the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, told the committee members that even though the Park Service has been given slight budget increases in recent years, "not enough of these increases are reaching the operations accounts of the parks."   The funding approved by the committee today -- a boost of $55 million over the current year's allocation -- will allow parks to reverse the decline of staffing that has affected visitor services, Rep. Dicks said.  He noted that 241 out of the 388 National Park units would have had operations budgets in the next year that would have actually been lower than two years ago if the Administration's original budget request had been approved. 

            After a recent tour of Olympic National Park, the congressman said he was convinced that his committee should redirect funding increases to assure that any increases approved this year are passed through to the parks and not used by the Interior Department or Park Service management for overhead expenses.   Working with the Interior Subcommittee Chairman Charles Taylor (R-NC), Rep. Dicks inserted language to assure that the additional funding will translate into service improvements for park visitors.  The panel also approved a total of $471 million for reducing the backlog of maintenance activities in the parks, he said.

            The appropriations bill approved today also funds the activities of the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and it continues a sustained program of restoring salmon habitat throughout federally-owned lands in the Pacific Northwest. 

            Included in the bill are funds to continue the efforts that Rep. Dicks launched in recent years to restore culverts that affect fish passage along streams and rivers, in addition to a program of identifying hatchery raised salmon stocks in order to protect threatened and endangered species.  This "mass marking" program has been implemented in the past year, allowing hatchery fish to be visibly distinguished by clipping the small, unused adipose fin using automated machinery.  The Interior funding bill for the next year contains another increment of funding in the Bureau of Indian Affairs and in the Fish & Wildlife budgets to continue this important work, the congressman said.

            The bill also includes two important land acquisitions that are priority requests from the Cascades Conservation Partnership in the Pacific Northwest:  $1.6 allocated from the Forest Service's Forest Legacy program for the Cedar-Green Forest project and $1.3 million to acquire lands nearby Mount Rainier National Park along the Carbon River.

            The bill also includes another critical element of the Elwha River restoration project, which will remove the two dams on the Elwha River and restore one of Washington's historically productive salmon-rearing rivers.  Rep. Dicks said that the Interior bill for the next fiscal year contains $26.9 million.   Thus far, the federal government has appropriated a total of $126.7 million for the project in the past several years.

            Addressing another important environmental challenge in Washington State, Rep. Dicks said the bill includes $350,000 to continue a study of the dissolved oxygen problem in Hood Canal.  A similar amount was included in the Interior bill this year, Rep. Dicks said, and he secured an additional $500,000 in the State and Tribal Assistance Grant program in another appropriations account to contribute to the joint effort to investigate the low levels of dissolved oxygen in the Canal.

            In a related move, Rep. Dicks inserted another $1.4 million for the spartina grass elimination program in Willapa Bay, representing the third year of the federal effort to fight the spartina infestation that imperils migratory birds in the area.  The state of Washington is also involved in the spartina control effort, Rep. Dicks said.

            Another $10 million was included for settlement of a boundary dispute involving the Quinault Tribe resolving the longstanding ownership issue.

            A complete listing of Washington State items in the Interior bill follows:

Timber Fish & Wildlife -- Forest and Fish Report and Implementation of Mass Marking policy  (Bureau of Indian Affairs) $4,987 million
Tribal Wildstock Initiative (Jobs in the Woods Program) $400,000
Culvert Restoration on Bureau of Land Management Lands $1 million
Culvert Restoration on Forest Service lands  $4 million
Forest Service Rural Technology Initiative  $600,000
Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group 
("Long Live the Kings" program)
$375,000
Forest Legacy : Carbon River $1.3 million
Forest Legacy: Cedar Green  $1.6 million
Fish & Wildlife Service Mass Marking Machines for Hatchery Fish  $2.1 million
Wash. Hatchery Reform Initiative  $2.5 million
Wash. Salmon Grants (National Fish & Wildlife Foundation coordinated program)  $2 million
Wash. State Regional Fisheries Enhancement Groups  $1.4 million
Willapa Bay National Wildlife Refuge Spartina Eradication  $1.4 million
Elwha River Restoration project -- continued funding  $26.9 million
Mount Rainer NP Study of Train to the Mountain  $700,000
Olympic National Park salmon obstruction removal   $1.94 million
Quinault Boundary Settlement  $10.032 million
Hood Canal Dissolved Oxygen project (U.S. Geological Survey budget) $350,000

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