Bush links ‘good’ environment, tourism

NAPLES, Fla. — President Bush highlighted his environmental policies for the second straight day yesterday, tying the preservation of endangered habitats with his volunteer program by rolling up his sleeves and helping to clear invasive plants choking a Gulf Coast estuary.

Mr. Bush, whose plan is to increase the 110 million acres of wetlands in the lower 48 states by 3 million acres in the next five years, said environmental protection and tourism can go “hand in hand.”

“The wetlands are essential to a healthy and diverse environment, and a good environment helps the tourism industry,” Mr. Bush said under a sunny Florida sky and with the Rookery Bay estuary as a backdrop. “Many people in Florida understand that. I understand it as well.”

Mr. Bush, like most Republicans, has come under heavy criticism from environmental groups and Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts for advocating policies that reputedly pollute the air, land and water.

The former oil executive, however, made a point of noting that he directed the federal government to buy back drilling rights in the Florida Everglades and in the Gulf of Mexico.

“There is no ambiguity on my position about drilling off the coast of Florida,” Mr. Bush said.

The president’s $349-million plan to increase wetland areas is focused on providing incentives and federal grants for landowners who set aside their property for wetland habitat.

“It’s really important for those of us in positions of responsibility to remind people that you can’t have good environmental stewardship if you rely solely on the federal government,” Mr. Bush said.

Mr. Kerry said the Bush administration previously advocated policies that would have “lost us 20 million acres of wetlands,” and expressed little faith the president’s new policy would come to fruition.

“You know as well as I do, once they get re-elected, they’ll walk away from that promise the same way they walked away from all the others,” Mr. Kerry said. “And why is it that we have a president who waits until the fourth year, waits until election time, waits until the criticisms are out there, before he even announces the possibility of what he could have been fighting for the last three and a half to four years.”

The Bush-Cheney campaign tried to paint the president as more dedicated to protecting the environment than Mr. Kerry, pointing to a quote the Democrat gave a Florida newspaper in support of off-shore drilling.

“I support oil drilling in the right places,” Mr. Kerry was quoted as saying in Wednesday’s Independent Florida Alligator. “There is capacity to protect what we have today — the protections for the coast of Florida — and still be able to drill in those locations where they’re already permitting, already had the environmental impact study, they’ve already had the leases.”

A Kerry spokesman has since stated that Mr. Kerry “has consistently opposed drilling off the Florida coast” and would “oppose it as president.”

The Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve’s 110,000 acres is home to manatees, sharks, more than 200 species of fish, 150 species of birds and an essential nesting area for endangered sea turtles.

Mr. Bush implored the country’s “armies of compassion” to use their energies to help save the environment. He and his brother Jeb, the governor of Florida, helped members of FreedomCorps clear invasive species of plants and shrubs from an area of the reserve for about 20 minutes yesterday.

Paul Hansen, executive director of the Izaak Walton League of America, a recreation-centered conservation group, applauded Mr. Bush’s wetlands-protection plan.

“Moving beyond a policy of ’no net loss’ of wetlands is an important step for preserving them for water quality and wildlife habitat,” Mr. Hansen said. “We are especially pleased with the pledge to accelerate completion of the National Wetlands Inventory. No other tool will be as vital to wetlands protection as this.”

Mr. Bush wrapped up his Florida trip with fund-raisers for the Republican Party at a private residence in Naples and a public forum in Coral Gables, a town just outside Miami. He raised $2.9 million in Naples and $1.5 million in Coral Gables.