vation easement sections are all aimed at protecting wetlands on agricultural land.

Briefly, the swampbuster simply denies Federal farm program benefits to producers that drain wetlands and convert them to agricultural commodity production. The CRP makes payments to farmers who retire highly erodible land for 10-year periods. Conservation easements allow the Farmers Home Administration to provide debt relief to farmers for giving easements to protect wetlands on their property.

With the swampbuster, among the chief concerns with this program is that it only denies benefits to those who drain and subsequently plant a specific commodity crop. This creates a loophole. It becomes even more dangerous in that a committee of local farmers are responsible for making determinations in the swampbuster violations program. We think by tying farm programs to wetlands preservation, the swampbuster has potential where some agricultural policies have failed.

Conservation Reserve is a program which was expanded recently to compensate farmers for restoring and enhancing wetlands. The new changes, which came in February of 1989, allow wetlands cropped during dry years to be enrolled in the 10-year program. According to USDA, we have about 200,000 to 300,000 acres of restorable wetlands enrolled in the Conservation Reserve now.

We believe, however, that we must have additional incentives and changes in CRP if it is to have lasting effect. Currently, wetland acreages in CRP represent less than 1 percent of the 30 million acres that have been enrolled into the program thus far. We believe that some kind of bonus payments or other additional incentives are needed to encourage landowners to voluntarily enroll and restore wetlands during the remaining three CRP sign-ups that are ahead of us.

The Farmers Home Administration was given a rather unique opportunity to protect wetlands in the 1985 Farm Act. Section 1318 authorizes that agency to assist financially troubled farmers by allowing them to cancel a portion of their delinquent debt in exchange for 50-year or longer easements.

Response to the Farmers Home Administration debt-for-easement program has been a bit disappointing to us. For nearly 3 years FmHA has stalled, in our opinion, the implementation of this program. Then when the changes were made by Congress in the 1987 Agricultural Credit Act which allow delinquent borrowers to write off debt owed to FmHA rather than exchange it for conservation easements, FmHA sort of gave up trying to get any easements as the original program calls for. The agency has forgiven more than $1 billion in debt owed by approximately 5,200 borrowers, an average in excess of $176,000 a person. In sharp contrast, FmHA has used conservation easements to help farmers resolve their problems in fewer than 350 cases.

We don't think the agency is fulfilling its responsibility to use easements for protecting wetlands on inventory land. These lands are the ones that the FmHA has taken from farmers for delinquent debts.

The Fish and Wildlife Service reports that it has made more than 1,200 easement recommendations covering some 100,000 to

150,000 acres of the inventory lands, and Farmers Home Administration has finalized less than 100 of these recommendations.

We think that another underutilized program for restoring and creating wetlands is the Small Watershed Program, Pub. L. 566, which has been around since the 1950s. It is administered by the Soil Conservation Service.

The Small Watershed Program is undergoing transition today. Traditionally, it has been a flood control effort, and has been notorious for directly or indirectly increasing agricultural drainage and conversion of wetlands. But today large, expensive, and sometimes destructive projects are beginning to give way, as they should, to smaller projects that use stronger local cooperation and inputs, including cost-sharing. We think there are some unique opportunities to use Pub. L. 566 funds to acquire easements in flood plains, wetlands, and riparian areas.

However, funding for Pub. L. 566 for beneficial wetland projects that serve a variety of public needs has been negligible so far. We think SCS should place a greater emphasis on wetland and water quality enhancements as called for by presidential initiatives, if this Small Watershed Program is going to broaden beyond its present base of support.

Although these aforementioned incentive approaches such as CRP easements and other procedures have been and shall continue to be used to maintain important wetlands, the problem still exists that the Nation cannot afford to lose any more. Existing regulatory procedures cannot adequately maintain these unique units of the landscape. We just heard from earlier witnesses that wetlands can be drained under the 404 procedure, even though they cannot be filled without a permit. Under swampbuster a wetland can be drained without loss of agricultural subsidies if a specified crop is not planted in the drained area.

We think that a better approach is required, and the Institute recommends a three-point system based upon the public trust doctrine of law. This system already has been used successfully in several areas.

Number one, there should be established a legal presumption that wetlands shall be maintained to perpetuate public values. Number two, there should be provided an opportunity to rebut that presumption; and, number three, there should be an appeal proc

ess.

This three-point system now is being used successfully in Massachusetts, a water management district in Florida, and for fish habitats in Canada. I think it warrants authorization and use at the Federal levels in the U.S, Canada, and Mexico, to overcome the shortcomings in existing programs.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The statement of Mr. Williamson can be found at end of hearing.]

Mr. STUDDS. Thank you, sir.

Next, Mr. Max Peterson of the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies.

Mr. Peterson?

STATEMENT OF MR. PETERSON

Mr. PETERSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In view of the time, I will try and highlight some points that maybe haven't been brought up before. You have my full statement for the record.

Let me start out by saying that we recognize that the process of loss of wetland has been going on for a long time in this country. It won't be reversed overnight. We don't see any "silver bullet" that would do that. What we are suggesting is that there are a whole lot of opportunities to make a difference.

Probably the first opportunity is one of public education and understanding of the value of wetlands and the functions they perform. We tend to protect the things that we value. If we don't value something or we see it as a liability, we are less likely to protect it.

A problem with protection of wetlands that is likely to be around a while is that most wetlands are privately owned, but the private owner does not see the benefits of the wetlands accruing to the owner. They may see benefits but they see them accruing to other people. Therefore, somehow we have to relate the cost of protecting wetlands to those who benefit from the protection, and not see wetland protection as simply a liability carried by a few people.

So we see the need for programs of public education, of technical assistance, and of incentives and regulation. All of those approaches will be necessary in order to make significant progress.

There are some rays of light. Some States have done some very innovative things. Minnesota, for example, has a "reinvest in Minnesota" program where there is a 1 to 1 matching program to protect critical habitat. Missouri, through its Department of Conservation, has drafted a Statewide wetlands management plan which identified critical and important wetlands for a variety of purposes, and has a very active program where either easements or acquisition are planned.

Let me talk about a few other things that go beyond technical assistance and education. A very high priority needs to be assigned, as Mr. Williamson said, to keeping the provisions in the 1985 Farm Bill and expanding them, so that we are sure that the Conservation Reserve provisions of the 1985 Farm Bill are retained. We seek to retain the benefits of the Conservation Reserve Program.

There are, for example, uses of wetlands that are perfectly compatible with their continued functioning. Hardwoods can be grown in wetland areas. They can be used for groundwater recharge. They can be used for secondary and tertiary treatment without damaging the wetland functions.

The Water Bank Program that has been mentioned here, which is separate from the Farm Bill, is a specific program to protect wetlands. Some innovative things that are being done in North Dakota, in the Pothole regions of the country that are extremely important to waterfowl, include what we include "piggybacking" on Conservation Reserve programs. That is to provide specific easements around these wetlands.

As mentioned here previously, if just the wetland is protected and no area around it, the wetland itself may deteriorate to the point where it is not much use. The function may be lost, with the

wetland still there. It may have too much sediment in it or pesticides or herbicides or other things, and if the wetlands are to serve waterfowl, for example, there may need to be a nesting area around it. Again the function may be lost with the wetland still being there. So we need to concentrate, as we look at protecting wetlands, on the function that wetlands provide and not just wetlands.

The 404 process, as has been mentioned before, is deficient in that it does not cover drainage or other loss of wetland functions. There are some minor things that could be done but have major payoffs. Some acquisition of land for refuges, both Federal and State wildlife refuges, is now being stopped because of the lack of assured revenue sharing. Refuge revenue sharing provides that funding will be provided to the States and counties to offset the loss of tax revenue. For several years in a row now full funding has not been forthcoming.

The Water Resources Development Act provides a mandate to the Corps of Engineers and to the Bureau of Reclamation to have a positive program of wetlands restoration and protection. I wish there had been an opportunity when the Corps of Engineers witness was here to talk about the positive things that they might be doing, such as to meet the mitigation requirements, as well as regulatory functions. There are substantial opportunities under the 1986 Wetlands Act.

The North American Waterfowl Management Plan, the agreement between Canada and the United States, reflected in bills before this Committee and the Senate provides a substantial opportunity to have a positive influence on the protection of wetlands for many important values.

Mr. Williamson has also discussed the FmHA easement provisions. Mr. Chairman, I would suggest that there are several ways to interpret that law. If you look at the fact that a farmer may get a $100,000 benefit through a write-down, it seems to me the public ought to get something in return for that. I am not sure that the two provisions of law need to be interpreted as contradictory. We would recommend that in return for the benefits of the write-down opportunity those public benefits such as easements for important wetlands be realized to the extent that they can.

We have also suggested that there may be some new things like a wetlands voucher system, whereby farmers would exchange wetland easements or fee title in exchange for commodity crops in storage or maybe some of these FmHA inventory lands that do not contain wetlands, so they would get farmland in return for protecting wetland.

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my highlighting of my statement. [The statement of Mr. Peterson can be found at end of hearing] Mr. STUDDS. Thank you, sir.

Next, speaking for the National Wildlife Federation, Ms. Janice Goldman-Carter. Welcome.

STATEMENT OF MS. GOLDMAN-CARTER

Ms. GOLDMAN-CARTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee. I want to mention that I am also presenting

this testimony on behalf of the Environmental Defense Fund and the Izaak Walton League of America. We appreciate the opportunity to present oral and written testimony on the effectiveness of existing programs for protecting wetlands from agricultural conversion and measures to halt such conversion, and ask that our testimony be included in the record of the hearing.

The National Wetlands Policy Forum report and President Bush's endorsement of the report demonstrate a strong national consensus that wetlands are indeed valuable natural resources, vital to our present and future standard of living; that we have already lost too many of them; and that we must find ways to achieve the no overall net loss of our wetlands in the short term and to increase the quality and quantity of the wetland base in the long term.

The purpose of this hearing is to identify the specific measures which must be implemented to achieve these goals, particularly those measures which require new Federal legislation. With 87 percent of our Nation's wetland losses, at least during the period of the fifties through the seventies, attributable to agricultural conversion, we cannot escape the fact that stopping wetlands losses nationwide will require stopping the conversion of wetlands to agriculture, and we must not delude ourselves into believing that the existing conservation programs on the books will do the job.

First, as has been mentioned, the permit program under section 404 regulates only the discharge of dredged or fill material into wetlands. The Corps of Engineers has generally refused to regulate discharges that accompany drainage, ditching, excavation, and clearing of wetland vegetation, referring to such discharges of dredged or fill material as de minimis, yet these are exactly the forms of wetlands activities that are causing the loss of wetlands due to agriculture.

To remedy these problems with the 404 program, the program should be amended to first expressly state a national wetlands policy and goal of no overall net loss of wetlands, and a long-term goal of increasing the wetlands base. To ensure that agricultural wetlands conversions are treated the same as other wetlands conversions, section 404 should be amended to clarify that drainage, dredging, excavation, inundation, and clearing of wetlands are subject to permit requirements. While normal ongoing agricultural, silvacultural, and ranching activities would continue to be exempt from regulation, the conversion of wetlands to new land uses would require a 404 permit.

Second, the swampbuster provisions of the 1985 Food Security Act only discourage, they do not prohibit agricultural wetland conversions. Indeed, swampbuster is only effective with those agricultural producers who rely heavily on commodity program subsidies. Even in those situations in which swampbuster could strongly deter wetland conversion to crop production, it hasn't done so due to poor implementation, particularly on the part of the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service county and State committees.

Swampbuster, as currently written and implemented, will not stop the conversion of wetlands to agriculture. Our Prairie Wetlands Resource Center, based in Bismarck, North Dakota, has