Wayne Gilchrest: “There is a family in Cecil County, the Kilbys, that live and work on a dairy farm, and they have been strong supporters…”

“There is a family in Cecil County, the Kilbys, that live and work on a dairy farm, and they have been strong supporters of the concept of Garrett Island being included in the National Wildlife Refuge system. There are broad and varied opportunities for this island to be included, and so I urge not only my colleagues to vote aye on this legislation, but I also urge the Interior Department, when they are visiting the island, to recognize those varied opportunities. The United States often sends biologists, zoologists, ornithologists, you name it, to vast areas of the world to study ecosystems. We have in our back yard, here in Maryland, a magnificent Chesapeake Bay watershed ecosystem, and this island can be one of those facilities that will be included in what could be known as an island corridor in the Chesapeake Bay so that people from the University of Maryland or the Baltimore Zoo or the Baltimore Aquarium, or other universities and community colleges and even high schools do not have to travel to Brazil or Southeast Asia or regions of Africa to show their interns or their students the kinds of ecosystems that make communities drive. They can send them to the island corridor, Garrett Island being the jewel of that concept.”