Trump administration leaves land and water conservation projects unfinished, according to Outdoor Advocate

Advocates worry that President Donald Trump’s administration may not finish federal land conservation projects around southern Idaho’s rivers and lakes, known for rainbow trout and smallmouth bass, this year.

Trump signed significant investments for the program in 2020, comparing himself to former President Theodore Roosevelt, a conservationist who helped build the National Park Service. The administration’s decision to hold up as much as $287 million in congressionally approved funding is causing delays.

Bryan Woodhouse of Idaho’s Magic Valley Fly Fishers club welcomed plans to expand the nearby Minidoka National Wildlife Refuge and the Craters of the Moon National Monument by 2,500 acres (1,012 hectares), two of the Interior Department’s possible acquisitions before the federal fiscal year ends on September 30.

“This new land would add areas that we can perpetuate and keep for our great-grandkids,” said retired biomedical researcher Woodhouse. “This area has trophy fish.”

Trump promised to shrink the federal government, and his administration has frequently refused to spend Congress-authorized funds.

Unlike many other government activities sponsored by public cash, Land and Water Conservation Fund acquisitions are undertaken using offshore oil and gas lease income. Some land purchases will improve hunting, fishing, and wildlife viewing.

The Interior Department’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, and National Park Service received about $287 million from Congress earlier this year to complete land and water projects and cover expenditures. Reps. worked in 38 states to link public areas in Florida’s Everglades and stabilize old Montana timberlands for snowmobiling and cross-country skiing.

Conservationists fear that private landholders whose land the government funds would acquire may sell to other purchasers, including commercial developers, with those acquisitions on hold.
“Land protection projects like these are deals in progress with willing sellers, and we will lose them if the government can’t meet its own expectations,” said Amy Lindholm, LWCF Coalition national coordinator and Appalachian Mountain Club director of federal affairs.

When asked whether Trump would utilize LWCF money for land expansion projects this year, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly replied, “President Trump is unleashing American energy while simultaneously allowing our nation’s natural beauty to be enjoyed for generations. The Land and Water Conservation Fund authorizes supporting initiatives that increase Americans’ outdoor access.
MARK LEGISLATION The bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act, signed by Trump in August 2020, permanently allocated $900 million to the Land and Water Conservation Fund to buy and manage federal public lands.

Today, we celebrate the passing of momentous legislation that will safeguard America’s natural beauty. At the 2020 bill signing, Trump remarked, “And from an environmental standpoint and from just the beauty of our country standpoint, there hasn’t been anything like this since Teddy Roosevelt, I suspect.”

In May, Trump’s Interior Department proposed in its 2020 budget that “instead of adding more land and infrastructure to the federal government’s already bloated real property portfolio,” hundreds of millions of dollars should be diverted from land acquisition to cover maintenance costs.

In recent legislative debates, the House and Senate appropriations committees rejected Interior’s budget request bipartisanly, but it highlights the administration’s testing of Congress’s constitutional financing responsibilities.

The top Senate Democrat overseeing Interior Department funding, Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, said, “It should outrage all of us who care about protecting and preserving our public lands.”
Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah, the Energy and Natural Resources Committee chairman, argues Washington cannot maintain current land and pushed to sell millions of acres of public land this year to make way for housing development.
Since 1965, the Interior Department has promoted the fund’s 46,000 projects in every county.

“There is a huge conservationist legacy for President Trump in signing permanent, dedicated LWCF funding into law, and all that is in jeopardy from what the current administration is proposing,” said conservation advocate Lindholm. To preserve that heritage, the president must inform agencies that the LWCF is off-limits.