Hunters, Anglers & Hikers Unite For LWCF
July 8, 2019 5:07 pmHunters, Anglers and Hikers Unite: Fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund
By Spencer Shaver, Sportsmen for the Boundary Waters
Congress has an opportunity to reauthorize a program that has provided billions of dollars to conservation projects for over 50 years, all at no expense to the taxpayer. Set up to improve access to the outdoors, as well as conserve fish and wildlife habitat, the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) has dedicated almost $4 billion to a mix of state and federal programs. All this funding comes from a percentage of royalties from offshore oil and gas production based off a simple idea – allow for the extraction of offshore resources then use some of the value generated off those royalties to pay into the conservation of natural resources across the country.
Click here to tell your members of Congress to support Conservation Legislation and the BWCA.
Bipartisan Support for LWCF and Boundary Waters
The idea is respected across the political spectrum, has the support of 82% of voters and is mutually beneficial to the state of Minnesota and the Boundary Waters. In fact, there are 82,400 acres of School Trust Lands in the Boundary Waters that are caught in the balance of this conflict today. In 2012, those school trust lands (in the Boundary Waters, but not able to contribute to the Trust) were slated to be purchased using funds from LWCF. School Trust Lands, which are legislatively mandated to produce revenue for the funding of Minnesota’s public schools on industrial timberlands, would be used for their intended purpose and no longer marooned in the BWCA. Additionally, the existing School Trust Lands in the Boundary Waters would be transferred to Federal ownership. Long story short – permanent funding of LWCF funds a program to pout school trust lands back into the trust while transferring ownership of the Boundary Waters to the Federal government, sorting out a decades-long management problem and improving conservation funding for the region.
Fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund
Click here to send a message directly to your Senators and Members of Congress urging them to do just that. It’s up to us to contact our elected officials and urge the permanent funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
The Land and Water Conservation Fund is great policy and an excellent opportunity for supporters of the outdoors to collaborate in a non-partisan way, focused on public land and wildlife protection. Broad-based coalitions with common goals of conserving wildlife, improving access to public lands and waters for hunters, anglers and hikers alike are important to this specific piece of legislation, but also to the future of conservation. With increasing threats to wild places like the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, it’s vital that we work together where there is a common goal of conservation.
LWCF’s permanent funding will lead to improved access to your public land and additional funding for conservation programs that affect the Boundary Waters. This form also tells your elected officials that these lands shouldn’t be purchased by the government, only to be polluted by a sulfide-ore copper mine they are simultaneously, recklessly allowing to be built.
Permanent reauthorization of the LWCF won’t protect the Boundary Waters from sulfide-ore copper mining, but working across the political spectrum to build support for common-sense conservation legislation is an important step in the right direction.
Click here to contact your Member of Congress today.
