The director of the Fish and Wildlife Service heads to Capitol Hill this week to make the case for habitat and wildlife conservation grant programs up for renewal.

Director Dan Ashe will appear before a Senate Environment and Public Works subcommittee to ask lawmakers to pass S. 2282, the "North American Wetlands Conservation Extension Act of 2012," to extend funding through 2017 before the law expires in October.

Ashe joined several sportsmen's and conservation groups last week to discuss the importance of the program, which has helped protect millions of acres of wetlands vital to migratory waterfowl through matching grants since 1989 (Greenwire, April 17).

The program has been hit with a 25 percent cut over the past couple of years, receiving $35 million this year, down from its historic funding level of about $47 million. Given the success of the program to leverage three private dollars to every federal dollar, that amounts to a loss of $48 million for on-the-ground conservation work.

Ashe called on lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to reauthorize the program, following the footsteps of its original authors.

"The bipartisanship and strong support that resulted in the signature of that great law is what we need to revitalize today," Ashe said at a congressional breakfast briefing last week.

Ashe and other wildlife experts will also be on hand to request reauthorization of funds for the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (S. 1494).

The foundation was established in 1984 to distribute public conservation grants while leveraging private matching donations or, as Ashlie Strackbein, the nonprofit's director of congressional relations said: "Congress created us to take every federal dollar and double it."

However, like NAWCA, the foundation turns one dollar into three; last fall, it celebrated the milestone of turning $576 million of federal funds into $2 billion for conservation and restoration projects since its inception.

While authorized to receive up to $30 million from various federal agencies, the foundation has typically operated with half that. However, appropriations dropped to $13.5 million in fiscal 2011, and remain the same in the Obama administration's fiscal 2013 request.

"We recognize Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies are being scaled back," Strackbein said. "We're confident we can continue to leverage those dollars and stretch their investment for conservation and still achieve measurable outcomes."

Other bills that will be considered at the hearing include:

• S. 810 to prohibit invasive research from being conducted on great apes.

• S. 1249 to amend the Pittman-Robertson Wildlife Restoration Act to allow states to pay up to 90 percent of the costs for acquiring land for, expanding or constructing a public target range.

• S. 2071 to allow the Interior Department to issue electronic duck stamps.

• S. 357 to allow the Interior secretary to declare wildlife emergencies, lead coordinated responses to emergencies, and establish a wildlife disease emergency fund.

• S. 1266 to establish a Delaware River Basin restoration program with competitive matching grants.

• S. 2156 to authorize the Interior secretary to set the price of the migratory bird hunting and conservation stamp every five years.

Schedule: The hearing is Tuesday, April 24, at 10:15 a.m. in 406 Dirksen.

Witnesses: Daniel Ashe, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; James Anderson, director of the National Institutes of Health's Division of Program Coordination, Planning and Strategic Initiatives; Doug Inkley, senior wildlife biologist for the National Wildlife Federation; Martin Wasserman, former secretary of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and former administrator of the Oregon Public Health Department; and Greg Schildwachter of Watershed Results LLC.