08/08/06 Cooperative Conservation session

Washington Ag August 8, 2006 The Secretary of the Interior, Dirk Kempthorne, is scheduled to be in Spokane Wednesday morning for a listening session on cooperative conservation. This is the first of eight such sessions being held around the country by Interior, Commerce Department, USDA, and the Council on Environmental Quality. Mark Rey, Undersecretary for Natural Resources is the USDA's point man for the listening sessions. Rey: "We thought this was a good time to hold a series of listening sessions around the country to advance the dialogue on cooperative conservation and to test market some of these ideas and to hear other ideas from other people." The listening sessions are an extension of last year's White House conference on cooperative conservation that identified three broad approaches to improving conservation results; promoting cooperation within the federal government, promoting cooperation between the federal government and others, and eliminating barriers to cooperating in existing policy. Rey: "These listening sessions will be in structure and format somewhat similar to the farm bill listening sessions that USDA did last summer, only this will be a different topic and a broader cast of characters." Wednesday's session in Spokane is to begin at 9 a.m. at the Spokane Convention Center. I'm Bob Hoff.