Denver — Today, Colorado U.S. Senator Michael Bennet, Chairman of the U.S. Senate Agriculture’s Committee’s Subcommittee on Conservation, Climate, Forestry, and Natural Resources, joined Colorado U.S. Representative Joe Neguse and U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) in a letter to U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, and other Biden Administration cabinet officials requesting increased investments to the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) in Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24). The bicameral letter requested that the President’s Budget Request for FY24 include $450 million in discretionary funding for LWCF, to complement the mandatory allocations provided by the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA).
“We are writing to express our support for strengthening the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), our nation’s most important conservation and recreation program. LWCF supports an array of benefits, from protecting drinking water and conserving natural infrastructure, to providing landscape conservation, habitat protection, and outdoor recreation access for all,” wrote Bennet, Neguse, and the lawmakers. “The program and its many benefits are critical to preserving America’s most treasured landscapes for future generations. However, LWCF needs increased investment in Fiscal Year 2024 to address all the outstanding conservation and recreation priorities across the country.”
Along with Bennet and Neguse, the letter was co-signed by a bipartisan, bicameral group of lawmakers including U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Richard Burr (D-N.C.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and U.S. Representatives Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.), Ed Case (D-Hawaii), Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), Jared Golden (D–Maine), Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), John Katko (R-N.Y.), Ann Kuster (D-NH..), Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-N.M.), James McGovern (D-MA), Tom O’Halleran (D-Ariz.), Chris Pappas (D-N.H.), Donald Payne Jr. (D-N.J.), Mike Thompson (D-Calif), and Peter Welch (D-V.T.).
Since his arrival to the U.S. Senate, Bennet has championed LWCF, introducing legislation to fully fund the program in every Congress since 2010. In 2020, he introduced the bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA) to permanently and fully fund LWCF. GAOA was signed into law in August 2020.
The full text of the letter is available HERE and below.
Dear Secretary Haaland, Secretary Vilsack, Chairwoman Mallory, and Director Young:
We are writing to express our support for strengthening the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), our nation’s most important conservation and recreation program. LWCF supports an array of benefits, from protecting drinking water and conserving natural infrastructure, to providing landscape conservation, habitat protection, and outdoor recreation access for all. The program and its many benefits are critical to preserving America’s most treasured landscapes for future generations. However, LWCF needs increased investment in Fiscal Year 2024 to address all the outstanding conservation and recreation priorities across the country.
This year, the Biden Administration submitted nearly $1.1 billion in LWCF needs in its FY23 budget request (including $214 million on the ready-to-go supplemental project lists), and hundreds of millions more were identified during the budget process but left off the final submission lists. Overall demand for LWCF is even higher, with many projects on the priority lists representing single phases of much larger projects. To avoid losing irreplaceable natural and cultural resources, we urge that the President’s Budget Request for FY24 include $450 million in discretionary funding, to complement the mandatory allocations provided by the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA).
Under GAOA, annual revenues covered into the LWCF account since FY2021 are dedicated for LWCF expenditure, allowing for increased investment in landscape-level conservation, working forests and ranchlands, historic and cultural sites, and access to the outdoors for all. The
legislation left intact the ability of future Congresses to appropriate additional discretionary LWCF funds, and over $22 billion in prior LWCF receipts remain unspent from the LWCF Special Account in the Treasury. Meanwhile, project demand in every state continues to outstrip the level set for the program, with many now-or-never opportunities at risk.
LWCF’s $900 million level was authorized in 1978, when the purchasing power of that amount was more than four times what it is today. Since that time, chronic underfunding of LWCF created a backlog of unmet conservation and recreation needs and a long line of willing-seller landowners and community stakeholders clamoring for access to these funds. GAOA’s dedicated funding can begin to address these critical needs; to more fully address urgent conservation priorities and inequities, additional targeted investment is needed from the unobligated balances of the LWCF Special Account.
Now is the time for America to make significant progress towards its conservation goals and to avoid loss of sensitive lands and waters. We urge you to consider an investment of $450 million in discretionary funds, in addition to mandatory LWCF funding, be part of the Administration’s next budget proposal to address the numerous ready-to-go project opportunities. To maintain the strength of the land management agencies and the integrity of their overall work, we ask that these additional LWCF funds be provided to augment the budgets of these agencies, and not to supplant other necessary operating spending.
Thank you for your attention to this important program and we look forward to working with you to grow investment in conservation and recreation across the nation.
Sincerely,