Important Message from Don Young, Executive Vice President of Ducks Unlimited

Hello, I'm Don Young, Executive Vice President of Ducks Unlimited, and I bring you greetings from the Ducks Unlimited convention here in Alaska, as you can see over my shoulder. Our newly elected President Bruce Lewis and our Chairman of the Board Jim Hulbert also send their regards want to send you some breaking news from here in Alaska.

As you know our mission focuses on protecting wetlands and waterfowl across North America and in recent years the protection of those wetlands in a regulated environment has been in jeopardy.

However, an opportunity has arisen in the last week where a bill called the Clean Water Restoration Act is being introduced into the House of Representatives. The opportunity here is to reestablish protection of those wetlands much as was the case back earlier on in the 2000s. Key issues here are, without that protection of these wetlands, waterfowl in the most important wetlands in North America are at risk. Ducks are at risk, and, in fact, the future of duck hunting is at risk as well.

The volunteer leadership and staff of Ducks Unlimited believe this legislation is important. Because it reestablishes legislation that was in place before that protects the wetlands just a few years ago. This legislation has the potential to protect wetlands, ducks and duck hunting for many years to come.

Additionally, it still will provide exemptions from this wetland protection for key agriculture interest, forestry, oil and gas and variety of other resource developers. We want to bring this message to you fairly early on as our DU volunteer leaders, because you are our contact with communities across the land. We may be calling upon you in the next week to put your oar in the water on another very important piece of conservation activity related to the Wetlands Reserve Program. This again is very important relative to our habitat and waterfowl protection work across North America.

This wetland protection legislation that is being proposed right now is something that is very vital and consistent with our 70-year mission. However, there will be others out there that will take a different position, and you can anticipate we will receive some opposition to our viewpoint on this. But this is so vital, so consistent to what Ducks Unlimited is about, that we need to take a stand now or the future of ducks and duck hunting is very much in jeopardy.

If you want additional information or want to share that with other people, please visit the Ducks Unlimited Web site at www.ducks.org. Once again, thank you to our most valued leaders of Ducks Unlimited. Our membership will also be getting actively involved in this.

This piece of legislation that I've described to you today is so important to the future of ducks and duck hunting that our million supporters across this country expect nothing less of us.

Thank you again and look forward to staying in touch.