In Terms Of $, LWCF Funding Isn't Going To Do Much But Provide Republicans With Outdoorsy Photos Ops
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Make no mistake, the GAOA is a good thing. Maybe even a very good thing. But it’s not the overwhelming achievement Republican politicians would lead you to believe. For one thing, I take issue with the idea that GAOA “fully funds” the LWCF’s $900 million annual budget. That funding amount was established in 1978, so let’s run some quick math on the inflation: $900 million in 1978 would be over $3.5 billion today. A more accurate description would be to say that the GAOA will allow the LWCF to achieve 25 percent of its intended impact. The GAOA contains no provision to adjust that $900 million for inflation in the future either, so it will “fully fund” less and less of the LWCF’s objectives with every passing year.
The purpose of the LWCF is to pay for access and maintenance projects across our nation’s incredible and unique system of public lands. And it’s a particularly neat piece of legislation, because it draws its budget not from taxpayers but from offshore oil and gas leasing fees, partially offsetting the environmentally deleterious impacts of those industries, using their own money. It’s the kind of thing that should foster bipartisan support, but rather than treat LWCF funding as the no-brainer it should be, it’s instead been used as a political football for nearly the entirety of its 56-year history. Its funding was even allowed to lapse entirely in 2018, after Republicans in the Senate failed to agree on an appropriate amount.
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The Department of the Interior oversees national parks, Bureau of Land Management land, agricultural water supplies, national wildlife refuges, and offshore energy production. (The Department of Agriculture manages national forests.) All of the drilling, mining, and other industrial uses of those lands and waters contribute over $350 billion to the American economy each year. According to its mission statement, the DOI is supposed to manage those lands and waters under a multiple-use mandate, balancing extraction with public recreation and ecosystem conservation. So while $1.9 billion a year may sound like a lot of money to you and me, it’s merely 0.5 percent of the total money generated on DOI lands and waters alone. If you factor in lumber from national forests, that percentage will fall even further. Extractive industries continue to be prioritized by Republican politicians to a degree that vastly outweighs what few crumbs might fall toward public access.
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Colorado senator Cory Gardner, a Republican, who is also facing a difficult reelection bid this fall, called the GAOA “the single greatest conservation achievement in generations.” Yet he hasn’t always supported LWCF funding. In 2011, he voted to slash the LWCF’s budget allocation by 90 percent. Actions like this are part of the reason we currently have such a large maintenance backlog on public lands.
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https://www.outsideonline.com/2416011/republican-politicians-outdoor-records
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"Land And Water Conservation Fund" - the original bill.
