[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
[July 2, 1999]
[Pages 1124-1126]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]
Remarks on Steps To Remove the American Bald Eagle From the Endangered
Species List
July 2, 1999
Thank you very much. I have to tell you I was very moved by that.
Let's give him another hand. [Applause] And all
these young people, I thank them.
Thank you, Levar. Thank you, members of the
Earth Conservation Corps. I'd like to thank all the adults and sponsors
who are here with them today and one strong supporter of this program
that is not here, my good friend Ethel Kennedy. I thank her and all of you for what you have done to
give these young people a chance to contribute to the conservation of
their community and to earn some money to go on with their education.
I'd like to thank Secretary Babbitt for
his outstanding leadership in this regard. He has been a wonderful,
wonderful steward of our Nation's fish and wildlife and natural
resources over these last 6\1/2\ years, and I'm grateful to him.
I'd like to thank George Frampton, who works on these issues for us here in the White House;
Jody Millar, the recovery coordinator for the
Fish and Wildlife Service. I'd like to recognize in her absence Jamie
Clark, the Director of the Fish and Wildlife
Service, who I believe is absent because she's about to have a baby,
which is a good way to support species preservation. [Laughter]
I'd like to thank Al Cecere and the
great eagle, Challenger, who are here. They look very good today
together, and I thank them for coming.
This is a special day for us to be having this announcement, because
we're about to enter the weekend to commemorate the very last
Independence Day of this century.
Yesterday Hillary and I joined a number of people at our National
Archives to celebrate this Fourth of July with a renewed effort to give
a special gift to America in the new millennium, the preservation of the
Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.
Today we honor the living symbol of our democracy, the American bald
eagle. It was, in fact, on July 4th, 1776, the very day the Declaration
of Independence was signed, that our Founders first considered the
question of a fitting emblem for our Nation. Believe it or not, Ben
Franklin wanted our national symbol to be a turkey. The press would be
having a field day with that to the present day, wouldn't they?
[Laughter]
Fortunately, in this case, Mr. Franklin, who had a lot of good
ideas, had this referred to committee--[laughter]--three committees, in
fact, and finally, 6 years later, the Continental Congress approved a
design for the Great Seal
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of the United States, a proud bald eagle, wings stretched wide, an olive
branch in one claw, 13 arrows in the other, ``A free spirit,'' said
Thomas Jefferson, ``high-soaring and courageous.''
Yet, years later, even as its likeness was known world over and the
very symbol of our might and our independence, here in America, the
eagle struggled barely to survive. At our Nation's founding, as many as
half a million bald eagles soared the skies in North America. Two
hundred years later only a few hundred breeding pairs remained in the
lower 48 States. Our majestic eagle was slipping toward extinction. You
just heard Levar's story about Washington, DC,
and the Anacostia.
But the American people decided to do something about it. First, we
banned the pesticide DDT which had poisoned the eagles' fragile eggs.
The naysayers said if we did so, it would wreck the economy, and as we
had seen before then and time and again since, the people who say
improving the environment will wreck the economy are wrong. We've done
reasonably well with the economy while we brought the bald eagle back.
But banning DDT was only the first step. People all across our
Nation banded together to guard nest sites; to nurse injured birds, like
our friend Challenger here, back to health; and like Levar and all of his young colleagues who are here with us
today, to reintroduce eagles in places where they had long ago
disappeared. Most important of all, we made the Endangered Species Act
the law of the land, declaring that extinction is not an option, not for
the eagle, not for other creatures put here by God.
Thanks to these efforts, the bald eagle is now back from the brink,
thriving in virtually every State of the Union. When I became President,
I'm proud to say, my State had the second largest number of bald eagles
in the country. But now they are everywhere, and we are very, very happy
about it.
Today I am pleased to announce that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service is taking the first step to remove the American bald eagle from
the endangered species list. It's hard to think of a better way to
celebrate the birth of a nation than to celebrate the rebirth of our
national symbol.
The return of the bald eagle is a fitting cap to a century of
environmental stewardship, charted for us in the beginning by one of our
greatest conservationists, President Theodore Roosevelt. I am proud of
what we have tried to do to fulfill his legacy, from the Yellowstone to
California's ancient redwoods to the Mojave Desert to the spectacular
red rock canyons of Utah, and just yesterday Vice President Gore announced the largest environmental restoration
effort in history, our plan to save the precious Florida Everglades.
In all these efforts we honor Teddy Roosevelt's ideal of leaving our
Nation even a better land for our descendants than it is for us, and
now, on the threshold of a new century, at a moment of unparalleled
prosperity, we have an historic opportunity to deepen our commitment to
conservation and to make it permanent.
The balanced budget I proposed for the coming year includes $1
billion for a lands legacy initiative, the largest annual investment
ever proposed for the protection of America's lands. This initiative
would expand our efforts to preserve critical wildlife habitat and other
national treasures. It would provide new assistance to communities to
protect farms, city parks, and other local green spaces.
In addition, I have also proposed guaranteed funding of $1 billion a
year every year to sustain these efforts into the new century. I was
disappointed that earlier this week committees in both the House and the
Senate voted to cut deeply into this request of the coming year,
including funds to help to keep other wildlife from becoming endangered
in the first place. All through our century we have found ways to pull
together across party lines to stand up for the environment, for
wildlife, for our natural heritage. I hope we can do that again.
It took all Americans to save the bald eagle: people in places where
you would expect the bald eagle and people in places where we had
forgotten the bald eagle ever existed, like Washington, DC. Now that we
have the bald eagle back, let's get the spirit behind the bald eagle
back and put America back on a bipartisan American course of
conservation of our natural resources.
You know, when Hillary talked to
me about starting this Millennium Project and devoting ourselves this
year and next year to giving gifts to the country for the new
millennium, she came up with this phrase, ``Honor the past and imagine
the future.'' More than any other area, the environment and dealing with
our natural resources gives us a chance to do both things
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at the same time. By saving the bald eagle and bringing it back home to
the Nation's Capital, these young people have honored our past. They
have also imagined a future in which we give all of our children a
chance to get a good education and to have a good income and a thriving
economy where we no longer destroy our natural resources but, instead,
build them up. It is the past, and it must be the future.
Thank you very, very much.
Note: The President spoke at 11:22 a.m. on the South Lawn at the White
House. In his remarks, he referred to Eagle Corps member Levar Simms,
and Al Louis Cecere, founder and president, National Foundation to
Protect America's Eagles, who handled the eagle.