Restoring Our Natural Heritage

have had a lot of on-the-job training in my seven years as Secretary of the Interior. Especially with endangered species. In the process I was surprised to discover that our rivers are the most neglected and degraded of all of our ecosystems; fully 35 percent of listed species are fish and other aquatic species: the salmon in the Northwest, the delta smelt in San Francisco Bay, the silvery minnow in the Rio Grande, the pallid sturgeon in the Missouri and a great variety of fresh water mussels in the southern Appalachians.The message is plain it is the rivers that most need our attention.