Director Steve Williams at Willapa National Wildlife Refuge Earth Day Event

April 24, 2002

Thank you, Anne. It is an honor to be here today to celebrate Earth Day. People often hear Earth Day and they think about the environment. But that is really only half the story. Earth Day is ultimately about people and how we can be better stewards of our environment.

That is why I am here at Willapa National Wildlife Refuge, because on this Earth Day, we are celebrating what a diverse group of dedicated and determined people were able to do when they came together and used good science and innovative thinking to accomplish a remarkable conservation feat.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton believes that for conservation to succeed, the people who live here, who work here, and who love this land must be involved and engaged in the stewardship of special places like Willapa. She calls this idea the Four C's: conservation through communication, consultation and cooperation. The partnerships we celebrate today are an excellent example of Secretary Norton's conservation philosophy.

I have only been Fish and Wildlife Service Director for three months, but that is long enough to appreciate just how contentious salmon restoration can be, especially here in the northwest. And yet, thanks to people from this community – with the help of conservation groups, businesses, and government agencies – five of the refuge's streams have been improved for salmon, cutthroat trout and other native species, including rare salamanders.

Thanks to these efforts, we once again have native salmon at Willapa. We are also seeing more waterfowl and shorebirds. And wetlands that were once choked by invasive plants like Spartina, reed canary grass and Juncus now host more than 40 species of native wetland plants, like manna grass, beggar tick and pond weed.

On Earth Day, the people who make the on-the-ground difference deserve to be recognized, and I would like to take this opportunity to spotlight those who have made a difference here at Willapa. I think you'll agree that the list is very impressive.

• The Willapa Bay Regional Fisheries Enhancement Group;
• the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife;
• Ducks Unlimited;
• The Nature Conservancy;
• the Natural Resources Conservation Service;
• Friends of Willapa National Wildlife Refuge;
• the Pacific County Commissioners;
• the Columbia Pacific RC&D;
• the US Army Corps of Engineers;
• the Washington State Department of Ecology
• the Fish and Wildlife Service's Columbia River Fisheries Office ;
• and the Fish and Wildlife Service's Jobs In The Woods program.

Additionally, the restoration work could not have been completed without the outstanding, innovative work of the contractors. They deserve to be recognized, too.

• Golder and Associates
• Rognlins Inc.
• Seminole Environmental Inc
• and NDCT Timber

You have all done excellent work. But there is more to do at Willapa National Wildlife Refuge. New lands have been added to the refuge, with more than a dozen streams in need of restoration. And, of course, we must always stay on top of the invasive plants problem.

At the Fish and Wildlife Service, we look forward to continuing these partnerships, and to working with you to build new ones. Together, we showed that we can restore salmon at Willapa, and that is something that will be remembered well beyond this Earth Day.

And now, it is my honor to provide our key partners with a token of our appreciation. The photographs, matting and framing, were done by Rudy and Winona Schuver, president and secretary of the Friends of Willapa National Wildlife Refuge.
Photographs, taken by Rudy last October, are of the first chum salmon returns to the Headquarters creek in 60 years. The matting is comprised of the blueprint plans for many of the anadromous fish restoration projects that have occurred on the refuge in the past few years.

Let us have a big hand for all the people who made a difference at Willapa on this Earth Day!