Many of you are new to the Subcommittee, and I look forward to working with you over the next several months as we work together to achieve a balanced budget while providing adequate funding for essential programs of the Federal Government such as these. In order to put the request for Reclamation and the CUP Completion Act in context, let me first briefly review the President's budget for the Department as a whole. Partnerships for Restoration. As I look back across the budgets I have presented in the last five years, the most striking trend is the increasing recognition that natural resource issues cannot be resolved on the basis of jurisdictional boundaries or by the work of single levels of government, let alone individual agencies. Modern science and modern ecology have taught us that the natural world does not work that way.
Landscapes are complex, living, and integrated systems.
Three principles must guide our approach to the most pressing natural resource problems. First, we cannot solve these problems by treating individual symptoms. We must treat them on a landscape scale. Second, in seeking solutions we must look across, and beyond, agency boundaries. We need to involve all the relevant Federal agencies, as well as States, local and tribal governments, industry, non-profit groups, and concerned ordinary citizens.