Conservation Fund future in doubt

By Nick Reynolds
Casper Star-Tribune
Via Wyoming News Exchange
 
CASPER — At an event last week commemorating the federal government’s purchase of 640 acres of land outside Casper, Sen. John Barrasso stood to give a speech commemorating the spirit of President Teddy Roosevelt and the importance of the federal lands he championed.
“He would be so happy today to see the legacy of protecting the land and passing it along to the next generation,” Barrasso said, before a tent filled with public officials, conservationists and Bureau of Land Management employees.
Purchased by the Bureau of Land Management with money from the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the acquisition was touted early on as a win for conservation and for tourism, a victory of preservation against a backdrop of creeping housing development growing from the city limits. The purchase of the land, in private hands for the better part of a century, will now be forever public, ensuring perpetual access to some of the richest fishing in the nation in the waters of the North Platte River.
A significant share of the funds that purchased this land, however, may be in jeopardy. The 1964 law that authorized the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which is supposed to receive $900 million each year, is set to expire at the end of this month unless Congress chooses to pass legislation to reauthorize it. Largely supported by members of both parties, the legislation has stalled at the committee stage in both houses, though the bill finally advanced through the House Natural Resources Committee last week. However, the pace of deliberations have left the fund’s advocates anxious the bill might stall before funding expires.
“One of the biggest issues you deal with in Congress is having enough time to get things done,” said Amy Lindholm, LWCF coalition manager for the Appalachian Mountain Club. “Floor time is hard to come by in Congress, and taking time with this piece of legislation obviously takes away time that could be spent on anything else. And this just hasn’t happened yet.”
The Land and Water Conservation Fund is used by state and federal agencies like the BLM to secure land for conservation and recreational purposes. Fueled by profits made in the exploration and drilling of natural gas projects, the fund was created on the principle that money spent to remove resources from the earth should be used to preserve the natural resources elsewhere.
Though $900 million is earmarked for the fund each year, Congress rarely appropriates the full amount: throughout its history, the fund has received $18.4 billion — less than half of what it was supposed to, according to the Congressional Research Service. Last year, the fund received just $488 million of what it was supposed to, with the rest of the money appropriated to other areas of the federal budget.
After 50 years of existence, the Land and Water Conservation Fund was reauthorized for a three-year term in 2015. However, this year, the bills up for consideration push for permanent authorization of the funding.
The fund’s primary purpose is to serve as the land acquisition bank for four federal agencies, including the BLM, the National Park Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Forest Service. It also acts as a funding mechanism for states to receive matching grants in the acquisition of parks and recreation land.
The prospect of permanent funding has been difficult for pro-energy Republicans to support. That includes Natural Resource Committee member Liz Cheney who has been critical of the fund and has, in the past, voted to divert funding away from it to pay for park maintenance.
In a letter to the outdoors group Wyoming Sportsmen for Federal Lands, Cheney said the fund has strayed from its initial formula of using 60 percent for maintenance and 40 percent for land acquisition. She argued that municipalities and local projects be given greater priority under the funding and that more money be committed to park maintenance and other uses. This is a stance supported by Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke who, in his 2019 budget, cut the land acquisition budget for the fund by 95 percent.
“The Land and Water Conservation Fund needs to be reformed to achieve its original intent to preserve, develop, and ensure access to public recreational areas,” Maddy Weast, a spokeswoman for Rep. Cheney, said. “While some projects certainly have merit, in recent years LWCF funds have too often been used by Washington bureaucrats to expand the size of the federal estate. Congresswoman Cheney believes that a reauthorization of the LWCF must include substantial reforms to ensure these federal dollars are used for their intended purpose and is working with colleagues to achieve that goal.”
Conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation have long made the argument for allowing the fund to expire and to emphasize maintenance of the land the federal government owns. In an article penned for the foundation called “Five Reasons to Sunset the Land and Water Conservation Fund,” analysts Nicolas Loris and Katie Tubb make the argument permanent reauthorization of the fund is “an admission that the federal government should be able to acquire more lands in perpetuity” which, they argue, will only add to the backlog of deferred maintenance the Department of Interior already faces.
Lindholm, however, says that the land acquisitions the fund facilitates helps to make projects that locals want to achieve but otherwise could not come to fruition.
“I don’t know that they’ve ever pointed to a specific project where these funds were not wanted,” said Lindholm. “The way the program works is you need to have support on the ground, from the community. That’s one of the criteria they use to select these projects.”
The fund will expire, and will no longer be able to pay for federal or state projects. However, Lindholm said, Congress can still independently appropriate funds for natural resource projects and grants through the existing infrastructure of the BLM, the Parks Service and other agencies
The biggest change: no longer will there be a direct tie between conservation and the funding source provided by natural gas exploration.