Rick Schultz Oral History Transcript (Partners for Fish and Wildlife)

Rick describes beginning days of the Farm Bill (implementing the 1985 Food Security Act) and its’ three major components: restoring wetlands on Conservation Reserve Program lands, protecting wetlands through Swampbuster and conserving natural resources on Farmers Home Administration lands. He connects early private land restoration work with the Mid-Continent Waterfowl Project. He discusses why the program was managed by Refuges in some regions and Ecological Services in other regions. He describes working with private lands staff in Washington, D.C. to get funding to support the private lands program and to develop a Wetland Reserve Program in the U.S. Department of Agriculture that has protected millions of acres of wetlands at no expense to the Fish and Wildlife Service. Rick describes the change in names from Farm Bill/private lands to Partners for Wildlife to Partners for Fish and Wildlife.