For Immediate Release

June 25, 2002

NEW EFFORT TO ASSIST FISH PASSAGE
INCLUDED IN INTERIOR BILL

WASHINGTON, D.C. – When the General Accounting Office estimated that more than 5,000 salmon-blocking culverts may exist on federally-owned lands in Washington and Oregon in a 2001 report to U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, the congressman said he was determined to take remedial action.

            Today Rep. Dicks, the ranking Democratic member of the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, launched a sustained effort to remove these barriers to fish passage, with the appropriation of $20 million for three federal land management agencies that he inserted into the interior appropriations bill for the next fiscal year.

            "With all of the government's resources devoted to recovery of threatened and endangered species, after the runs have declined, it is only prudent for us to take this step to remedy these man-made barriers to fish passage on federal lands," Rep. Dicks stated Tuesday as his subcommittee completed initial work on legislation funding the Interior Department agencies as well as the Forest Service in the upcoming year.

            The $20 million appropriation will be divided among the budgets of the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to be used to repair and/or replace culverts that allow roads or trails to traverse streams, but which block the normal routes of salmon and other anadromous fish from spawning areas to open waters. 

            The interior funding bill also takes another important step in funding the conservation spending program -- the third year in a six year effort begun by Rep. Dicks in 2000 to increase sharply the amount of federal funding available for new park and forest land acquisition, maintenance of public lands and wildlife conservation.

            For the next fiscal year, the bill designates a total of $1.44 billion for the conservation effort, representing a steady increase from the 2000 level of $752 million.  "This continually-increasing federal commitment is making a substantial  contribution to reducing the backlogged maintenance on public lands at the same time it has allowed us to address the need to acquire valuable new park and forest lands for public uses," Rep. Dicks stated.

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