May 20, 2021 A picture of a kayaker on a calm lake with trees that have a golden color to them from the fall season. Forest Service research scientists have calculated the societal value of recreation opportunities across all national forests in the United States to be $14 billion annually. They have even calculated the […]
An Opinion Letter from Representative Paul Gosar AZ The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) has for more than 50 years been the federal government’s primary form of land acquisition funding billions of dollars in new land buying and supported state grant programs. Over the last five years, the program has been subject to much […]
Outdoors Act Is Law, Part I — By Cort Jones and Roxanne Sutton | Posted on September 8, 2020 Last month, we witnessed history as the Great American Outdoors Act was officially signed into law. This legislation will definitively fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). LWCF is the most important source of […]
Passing the Great American Outdoors Act was a huge accomplishment for the outdoor recreation industry and the thousands of businesses, large and small, that makeup the $778 billion recreation economy. Now that this huge achievement of fully funding the Land and Water Conservation Fund and allocating real funding for federal land management agencies’ deferred maintenance […]
Supporters of mandatory funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund do not want the escalating deferred maintenance backlog on public lands and in national parks to eclipse their efforts to boost the popular bipartisan conservation program. “I know some of my colleagues believe we must choose between funding LWCF and a deferred maintenance backlog,” […]
Bernhardt on LWCF: ‘I’m a believer’ Kellie Lunney, E&E News reporter Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt today reassured senators concerned about the administration’s paltry fiscal 2020 budget request for the Land and Water Conservation Fund that he would work with them “to make things land in the right place.” The Colorado native praised Congress for […]
Dozens of outdoor recreation business owners across the country are calling on congressional appropriators to put $900 million into the Land and Water Conservation Fund in fiscal 2020. “Outdoor recreation is an $887 billion — and growing — industry,” the group wrote in a lettertoday to Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), the […]
Kellie Lunney, E&E News reporter Published: Wednesday, February 27, 2019 The House voted last night to send public lands legislation to the president. C-SPAN The House last night overwhelmingly passed a massive, bipartisan public lands package, securing well over the two-thirds’ support needed to pass the legislation under suspension. The measure, which the Senate passed 92-8 […]
FEB 26, 2019 MATTHEW DALY Associated Press WASHINGTON — A wide-ranging bill that revives a popular conservation program, adds 1.3 million acres of new wilderness, expands several national parks and creates five new national monuments has won congressional approval. The measure is the largest public lands bill approved by Congress in more than a decade. […]
The House early this week will vote on the broad, bipartisan public lands package that the Senate overwhelmingly passed earlier this month. The “Natural Resources Management Act,” S. 47, is slated for consideration tomorrow under suspension of the rules, according to the House floor schedule for the week of Feb. 25. House leadership typically places on the suspension […]
