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Help Secure Permanent Funding for Refuge System Land Acquisition!
Legislation being considered right now in both the House and Senate to address the BP Gulf Oil disaster could fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund every year – that’s $900 million annually for land conservation – including funding for national wildlife refuges!
The Refuge System is mandated to be strategically grown, but years of inadequate funding for land acquisition has resulted in the loss of many important habitats. The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) was created to ensure our nation’s most treasured resources and natural areas are protected for future generations but without strong support from Congress, the program’s full potential to protect national wildlife refuges and other public lands will not be realized.
In addition to the LWCF provision, the Senate version also includes the National Wildlife Refuge System Resource Protection Act of 2010 which would allow the Refuge System, through the Department of the Interior, to sue for damages created by a person (which could be a corporation) that destroys, damages or causes the loss of a Refuge System resource. The Refuge System would have to show in court that the responsible party acted with negligence. The settlement reached in cases like this could be used to restore Refuge System resources to what it had been prior to the damage and if the resource cannot be restored or replaced, would place a monetary value upon it. The bill would also allow the monitoring of the resource for such a time as to determine it is whole again.
Another important aspect of the Senate's version would allow up to $5 million annually for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, the fund created after the Valdez spill, to ensure FWS is prepared for another disaster. This funding could be used for inventory and monitoring and other capacity needs of refuges where oil spills could have an impact and is especially important because no refuge had a comprehensive baseline inventory of their resources prior to the BP spill; refuge staff scrambled ahead of the oil to do basic inventories of birds, mammals, insects, fish and plants as well as water quality. This modification to the original Oil Pollution Act of 1990 would ensure these refuges have at least some resources for inventories every year. In the event of another major spill, the amount goes up to $20 million for a total of $25 million.
Background
The LWCF was established by Congress in 1965 to meet the nation’s growing desire to preserve natural areas, culturally and historically significant landmarks, and provide opportunities for outdoor recreation. The Act designated that a portion of receipts from offshore oil and gas leases be placed into a fund annually for state and local conservation, as well as for the protection of our national treasures such as national wildlife refuges, national parks and forests. The LWCF program has added millions of acres to all our public lands – approximately 1.5 million acres of the NWRS were acquired through the LWCF.
Despite LWCF’s strong track record of success over the past 45 years, the program faces enormous challenges. Lands with significant historic, cultural, and wildlife values are rapidly being converted to other uses. Factors that are responsible for this trend include increasing land values, population growth, and the development of the rural-urban fringe. Yet, in the face of escalating development pressures, funding for the LWCF declined precipitously for years until recent funding increases brought revitalization into the program.
Funding History
LWCF is authorized at $900 million annually, a level that has only been reached once during the program's 45-year history, and adjusted for inflation, would be north of $3 billion annually. The program is divided into two distinct funding pots: State grants and Federal acquisition funds, with funding for land acquisition in the NWRS only a portion of that. Until FY 09, program funding followed a dramatic decline, with a total of only $138 million in fiscal year (FY) 2008.
The recorded balance in offshore oil revenues credited to, but not appropriated to, the LWCF is approaching $17 billion; that means $17 billion should have been spent on conservation, but was not - a $17 billion broken promise!
Please encourage your U.S. Representative and Senators to support full funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) in the gulf oil spill bills moving through the House and Senate this week and next.
Image of Silvio O. Conte NFWR, Credit: Jerry Monkman
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Your U.S. Representative
Your U.S. Senator
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Please support the Gulf oil spill bill including full funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fu
Dear Representative,
I stand with the National Wildlife Refuge Association in urging you to support full funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) in the gulf oil spill bill.
The tragedy of the BP Oil Spill reminds us how vulnerable our public lands and waters, surrounding communities, and wildlife are to harm. We need sustained investment to provide long-term protection of the natural places that are so important to us as Americans, and the LWCF was designed to do just that. It is time to keep the promise that was made to use all the funding deposited in LWCF to protect national wildlife refuges and places Americans care about for future generations.
The LWCF provision recognizes the central importance of reinvesting in one public resource – our nation’s public lands and waters – as we deplete another – oil from federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere. Since it was enacted in 1965, LWCF has been the only conservation offset for offshore oil drilling.
LWCF is authorized to receive a very small percentage of revenue from offshore leases for oil and gas - $900 million a year – but has only reached this goal once. Today, the LWCF has an authorized balance of more than $17 billion that should have been spent on conservation, but was not- please restore this broken promise and support full funding for the LWCF in the gulf oil spill bill.
Thank you for your consideration.
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