Letter to Sally Jewell, Secretary of the Department of the Interior - Funding for the Connecticut River Watershed and the Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge

Letter

Dear Secretary Jewell:

As elected representatives of the four states encompassing the boundaries of the Connecticut River Watershed and the Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge, we write to urge you to provide sufficient funding in your FY17 budget to support the Refuge.

We thank you for including $2 million in the President's FY 16 budget in Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) last fiscal year. While we continue to advocate to our colleagues on the appropriations committee, Conte Refuge has not ranked high enough on the project list to receive funding for FY16. We hope you will consider moving the Refuge higher on the list of priority projects for LWCF funding. The current need for the Refuge is acute: Fish and Wildlife Service staff and the non-governmental partner groups composing the Friends of Conte have identified over $14 million in projects as current and available priority opportunities within the Refuge.

Because of the many local, state, and federal partnerships in this watershed, the Conte Refuge presents a unique opportunity to leverage additional non-Federal funding. Additionally, members of the land trust community from throughout the basin routinely assist the Refuge in identifying properties and working with landowners towards federal ownership, lowering staff time and costs to the Service. These land trusts also have added a combined total of more than 350,000 acres to the conservation estate basin-wide, providing recreational opportunities to the more than 2.3 million people who live in the basin and another 70 million who live within a day's drive of these properties.

While we continue to work to reauthorize and for full funding for LWCF, we hope you will continue to put forward adequate funding for the Conte Refuge. We look forward to working with you during the final steps of the FY16 and through the FY17 appropriations process.

Sincerely,

U.S. Senator Christopher S. Murphy
U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal
U.S. Senator Ed Markey
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren
U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen
U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders

CC.:

The Honorable Daniel Ashe
Director
Fish and Wildlife Service
Department of the Interior
1849 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20240

The Honorable Shaun Donovan
Director
The Office of Management and Budget
725 17th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20503