NEW GLOUCESTER, Maine (AP) – Interior Secretary Gale Norton on Wednesday reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to the North American Waterfowl Management Plan that includes the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

The revised public-private program strengthens a partnership that has been in place since 1986 between the United States and Canada. Mexico signed onto the program two years later.

“The landmark approach they developed only 20 years ago to manage continental waterfowl is just as vital today. Wildlife managers use the plan’s design to launch a new era in wildlife conservation,” she said.

The plan, in which member nations have invested more than $2.2 billion, aims to protect and restore more than 8 million acres of habitat.

Norton was joined at the news conference at the Pineland Center by the head of Maine’s Bureau of Resource Management, the president of Ducks Unlimited and the executive director of the Nature Conservancy in Maine.

Afterward, Norton joined Republican congressional candidate Brian Hamel on a tour of Robbins Lumber in Searsmont before they traveled together to Liberty to attend a fund-raiser for Hamel’s campaign.

Also Wednesday, U.S. Deputy Labor Secretary Steven J. Law came to Portland to announce an emergency grant of $367,350 to assisted 50 workers laid off because of the closing of Tartan Textile Inc.

A spokesman for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry accused the officials in the Bush administration of making taxpayer-funded trips on behalf of President Bush’s re-election campaign.

“I think it’s incredibly disingenuous for the administration to force Maine taxpayers to pay for campaign trips to Maine a month before the election,” Jesse Derris said.