CONSERVATION FUNDING
Protecting America's lands by advocating for sensible operations and management funding.
About Conservation Funding
The Wilderness Society’s mission is to protect wilderness and inspire Americans to care for our wild places. To achieve those goals, staff throughout the organization work in a variety of ways to protect new lands, monitor lands already protected, and anticipate opportunities and challenges on the land in the future. All five of our major campaigns – Wilderness Designations, Global Warming, Energy, Stewardship and Recreation – depend significantly on our advocacy for robust and consistent funding from the federal government through the annual budget and appropriations process. Whether it is through operations and management dollars in national parks, research and development dollars to assess the effects of climate change in wildlife refuges, or funds devoted to critical land acquisition through the Bureau of Land Management, the budget and appropriations process is vital to protecting wild places. To that end, The Wilderness Society’s Conservation Funding staff relies on a four-pronged approach to achieve its goals:
- Internal TWS Integration
- External Partner Integration
- Outreach and Advocacy
- Communications
Internal TWS Integration
Staff from the DC headquarters and around the country rely on the conservation funding staff to provide them critical information on the timing and opportunities afforded in the budget and appropriations process. Conversely, the conservation funding staff relies on the field and the DC specialists to give them the information they need to advocate for programs more effectively. This coordination is primarily done through the TWS Approps list-serve and a bi-weekly conference call. Conservation funding staff use these opportunities to:
- Send articles and pertinent budget timing information
- Provide advocacy fact sheets and budget data to the staff
- Report back to the staff following key meetings on the Hill or in the agencies
- Receive and evaluate priority land acquisition projects from the staff nationwide
For example, each year the Conservation Funding program coordinates the preparation of the TWS’ priority land acquisition project list. Staff from around the country submit potential land acquisition projects to DC conservation funding staff for consideration. Those projects chosen are listed on our website, advocated for individually through the land agencies and the Hill appropriations staff, and tracked throughout the budget process to ensure they are considered for funding.
Another example of this integration occurs during public witness day for the budget. TWS is given an opportunity each spring to advocate for its priority programs in front of the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee. Conservation Funding staff gather detailed programmatic information from the policy and field staff to prepare the testimony that becomes a public record of TWS’ conservation funding priorities for the year.
External Partner Integration
The Wilderness Society’s Conservation Funding program is known throughout the broader environmental community as a leader on budget and appropriations issues. This leadership manifests itself in a number of ways:
- TWS is the community lead on the yearly Green Budget
- Conservation funding staff co-chair the Land and Water Conservation Fund Task Force
- Conservation funding staff co-chair the Green Group’s Appropriations team
- TWS budget staff play a leading role at high level legislative strategy meetings among our partners
The Green Budget is a major undertaking. It typically takes two months to compile, involves over 50 experts in particular fields of budget experience, and covers potential conservation funding needs government-wide. TWS budget staff work with coalition experts, appropriations staff, and federal agencies to gather data and propose funding levels for hundreds of programs and priorities.
On a more day to day level, TWS Conservation Funding staff partner with colleagues in the environmental community to:
- Educate congressional and executive branch staff about environmental funding
- Author dear colleague and sign on letters for the environmental community to put its combined membership and strength behind funding needs
- Co-author reports such as The Land and Water Conservation Fund 2009 report that has become a crucial advocacy document
- Report to the conservation community about timing, strategy, and talking points on the budget process
Outreach and Advocacy
As the eyes and ears for TWS and for the environmental community regarding budget and appropriations strategy, the Conservation Funding staff set up and conduct meetings with hundreds of key policy decision makers each year. These connections include:
- Congressional appropriations and budget committee staff
- Congressional staff for individual members
- House and Senate leadership staff
- Land management agency budget and leadership staff
- Administration budget and leadership staff, including OMB
The Conservation Funding staff take recommendations, data, and programmatic information from their own field and policy staff – as well from their partners and colleagues – to key decision makers in Washington. In return, the decision makers provide valuable insights on timing, strategies and goals for conservation funding.
This work consistently pays off significantly. Each year, The Wilderness Society’s budget staff advocates for individual land acquisition projects in the federal budget. They meet with agency leaders to learn more about the projects, legislators who would benefit from those projects, and appropriators who fund those projects. When the budget comes out annually, a number of our priority acquisition projects are always funded.
There are many other ways that advocacy and outreach achieves results. If a particular environmental program is to continue to receive adequate and stable funding annually, it needs to demonstrate justifiable results. Conservation Funding staff constantly receive information from the field and from other policy staff about how appropriated dollars are being used. This information is vital when Congress and the land management agencies evaluate the effectiveness and vitality of environmental programs annually. Helping Congressional leaders understand the importance of conservation funding ensures that the programs we care about will continue to grow.
Communications
As Conservation Funding staff receive information from colleagues and policy makers, they disseminate that information out in a variety of ways. Some examples are:
- Web stories or action alerts
- Fact sheets and lobby talking points
- Reports and historical budget trends
- Media outreach
For example, following the environmental community’s release of the Land and Water Conservation fund report, TWS staff helped give it relevance in a number of ways. Budget staff worked with communications staff on press releases, letters to the editor and blogs that netted several news stories. In addition, TWS took a leading role in rollout out the report’s recommendations to Congressional staff. Finally, budget and appropriations staff continue to use the report in daily advocacy all over Washington, and as a result policy makers are working to implement the report’s recommendations.
On a smaller scale, Conservation Funding staff use the annual list of priority land acquisition projects to conduct individual Congressional member outreach. In addition to meeting with policy makers about the projects, budget staff along with communications staff send out state specific WildAlerts to educate TWS members and to activate them in support of critical land acquisition possibilities. On many occasions, those calls and letters from constituents are the reason that Congressional policy makers support TWS funding requests.
TWS’s Conservation Funding program touches all aspects of the organization’s work and is also critical to the work of many other partners. Through a combination of internal integration, external integration, advocacy, and communications, the budget and appropriations staff achieve significant conservation funding successes each year. The strong working relationship between our budget and appropriations staff and key land conservation advocates on Capitol Hill during the past eight years is part of the reason we are poised to take advantage of this new Administration’s conservation ethic, and it is no coincidence that many of TWS’ priorities over the years are now shared by those in power.
Useful Conservation Funding Resources
photos:
Woman and companion in Chattooga River flowing in Rock Gorge Roadless Area of Sumter National Forest. Photo by Butch Clay.
Designated coastal wilderness in Olympic National Park, Washington. Photo by Jeff Fox.
