What's near and dear to my heart is cooperative conservation.
We have vastly increased the amount of funding that is available for conservation partnerships.
These are estimates that are done by the experts as to how much they expect we could get from the first lease sale that would take place in ANWR, and the estimate is about $2.5 billion.
The developers, if they decide to move a tortoise, have to pay the long-term costs for enhancing the areas that take care of the tortoise, and it gives us the opportunity to manage an area that is going to be protected.
Why has it seemed that the only way to protect the environment is with heavy-handed government regulation?
Local innovation and initiative can help us better understand how to protect our environment.
Especially with the predators, one of the things that gets these programs going on a local level is for our land management agencies to build partnerships with surrounding communities and landowners.
Growing up in Denver, I'm sure it started with loving the Colorado mountains.
We also know that China and India, as their economies ramp up, are using more and more energy.
I think today we recognize that economic activity needs to search for ways to protect the environment.
I spend a year at the Hoover Institute at Stanford, researching market approaches to air pollution control.
I was a little too young to be a hippie.
Predators make it much more difficult to find consensus. It's a lot easier to agree about birds and plants than about animals that endanger people and livestock.
We do have serious energy needs for the country, we are aware that natural gas is especially in demand because of its air quality benefits: 90 percent of new power plants have been natural gas-powered.
Our responsibility for BLM lands is multiple-use, meaning a variety of needs and uses.
I think the greatest challenge in environmentalism and the most rewarding challenge is trying to figure out how humans can meet their needs while protecting the environment.
I think that our cooperative conservation approaches get people to sit down and grapple with problem solving.
Human beings are going to be relying on natural resources for a long time.
In Washington, there's always an effort to label people.
I started out as a Democrat.
