Conserving America's Landscapes
Congress created the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) in 1965 to meet the nation’s growing desire to preserve natural areas, culturally and historically significant landmarks, and outdoor recreational opportunities. The LWCF program has added millions of acres to our national parks, national wildlife refuges, national forests, national historic and scenic trails, wild and scenic river corridors, Bureau of Land Management lands, and other federal lands. Most of the nation’s largest intact landscapes, historically important sites, and recreational access points are found on these public lands. In addition, the LWCF includes a critically important state grants component that supports the protection of recreation lands and the development of parks at the state and local level. In complement, the Forest Legacy Program, administered by the U.S. Forest Service, fosters federal partnerships with landowners, states, local governments and non-profit partners to conserve working forests.
LWCF funding has been low and unpredictable over the program’s forty-four year history, approaching the full funding level of $900 million only twice. In the past ten years, program funding has followed a dramatic decline, with a total of less than $155 million in Fiscal Year 2008. Meanwhile, demand for these funds to protect our nation’s most treasured natural, cultural, and recreation areas has skyrocketed. In the face of often intense development pressures, an ever-increasing number of key resource properties will be lost if they are not purchased and conserved by the public. Today, LWCF can meet only a small fraction of that urgent need. And each year, more and more of America’s irreplaceable wildlands, fish and wildlife habitats, scenic areas, historic sites, and neighborhood parks are developed, fragmented, and otherwise sacrificed because there is simply not enough LWCF money to go around. The Land and Water Conservation Fund Coalition is a group of nonprofit organizations working together to support ample funding for the LWCF, the Forest Legacy Program and natural resource adaptation funding. We are pleased to present this report, with several recommendations to improve the program.
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Sam Goldman
Sam has been with The Wilderness Society since Fall 2007. He came most recently from M+R Strategic Services in Washington, DC where he worked with national environmental groups to improve their online campaign work and field organizing capacity. Before that, Sam was the Assistant National Field Director for U.S. PIRG where he covered a variety of issues including the fight to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
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