The Commission recommends the development of aquatic ecosystem restoration strategies for the United States. This comprehensive program should establish specific national restoration goals for wetlands, rivers, streams and lakes and provide a national assessment process to monitor achievement of those goals. The following recommendations are proposed as components of the program and its guiding strategy. Programming details should be developed by federal and state agencies in partnership with non-governmental experts. A national strategy includes four elements: National restoration goals and assessment strategies for each eco region (areas with very similar soils, topography and dominant vegetation). Redesign policies and programs for federal and state agencies to emphasize recovery. Innovations in land and water market financing and use: Achieving these restoration goals requires planning, federal leadership, federal funding, funding sources, and active participation at all levels of government, and involvement of NGOs and businesses. Therefore, the federal government should initiate an interagency and intergovernmental process to develop a national aquatic ecosystem restoration strategy. The program should be developed and maintained under the firm direction of a single responsible body with the characteristics described in Chapter 8. Program implementation should rely on local and regional environmental restoration authorities for program planning, integration, and management. Appropriate current federal programs should be reviewed to identify opportunities available for aquatic ecosystem restoration. Given the budgetary constraints that exist, innovative ways to fund restoration work are needed. Therefore, Congress should establish a National Aquatic Ecosystem Restoration Trust Fund. Private landowners and businesses should be given strong federal and state incentives to restore aquatic ecosystems. Every effort should be made to use federal and other government funds to encourage public participation in restoration. Public participation (either by private civic groups or public interest groups) has helped initiate and sustain restoration efforts. Additionally, Congress should allow state and local governments to exchange federal funds for the construction, maintenance, and major repairs of water bodies to fund ecosystem restoration programs for water bodies. . The Food, Agriculture, Conservation, and Trade Act of 1990 allows the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to enter into long-term contracts with farmers to exclude former agricultural wetlands from production and make them available for use. We need to restore them as wetlands. However, by law, the number of acres covered by the program is limited to 200,000 acres per year (maximum of 1 million acres). Each acre of agricultural land that has ceased production and has been restored as a wetland is no longer eligible for the benefits of the USDA program. Therefore, Congress should demand that the USDA investigate where and how expanding the Agricultural Wetland Reserve Program will lead to savings for USDA Farm Program spending. Funds saved can be reallocated to expand the wetland conservation program to more than 1 million acres. Although restoration ecology applied to aquatic ecosystems is at a very early stage of development, the prospects for substantial improvement of degraded aquatic ecosystems are excellent. However, current federal and state environmental programs and policies are fragmented and do not adequately emphasize management-based restoration of large, interconnected aquatic ecosystems.