When I need a “pick me up,” I just go for a wildlife ride and look for God’s creatures. They seem to have made it through thousands of years of ups and downs, and last week they got a really, really big surge upwards.
Congress passed the Great American Outdoors Act.
I will provide a little background story first. In 1964 Congress passed the Land and Water Conservation Fund. This fund needed to be reauthorized periodically. This directed $900 million that the government received from gas and oil drilling royalties to this dedicated fund. As soon as it was passed, that same Congress started raiding the fund. Sounds a lot like Social Security to me. As the years passed, they habitually funded very small portions of what was promised.
The money that did get deposited in the fund was divided up and used by the states to acquire additional acres and improve the existing public lands acres. I don’t call them public lands. I call them citizen-owned lands. These are acres we can all use to recreate, camp, fish, bird watch or any other compatible use. I believe that every citizen, regardless of their economic status, should be able to enjoy the outdoors. Citizen-owned lands are the only way this is allowed to happen.
Each year dozens of conservation organizations lobbied hard for full funding. It never happened. This year was different. In an election year many unusual things happen. The Land and Water Conservation Fund was made permanent, no longer needing reauthorization, and so was the maximum funding of 900 million dollars. These funds would still come from oil and gas revenues but if they fall short, the funding must come from somewhere else. If you consider yourself a sportsman or sports woman, this is the biggest news to hit the outdoor press in 50 years.
In addition to permanent and fixed funding, the act also authorized $9.5 billion to be spent over the next six years to reduce the backlog of maintenance issues in our national parks.
With the Covid-19 restrictions, more and more folks are spending time outside. It was this increase in outdoor interests that helped fuel the support for the bill’s passage and its ultimate success. This is a monumental conservation bill, one unlike any other I have ever seen before and on a scale much larger than anything in the past.
Congressional representatives from some western states were adamantly opposed to this legislation. Those states already have upwards of 50 to 70 percent of their lands in federal ownership. I say spend those dollars in areas that have almost no citizen-owned lands at all. My county has less than 2 percent of its acres in any form of citizen-owned property.
It has historically been the congressional Republicans that have opposed this type of legislation. With the slim margins of each party’s majority in both houses of Congress, even one or two seats can turn the tide. Hence the overwhelming bi-partisan support this bill received.
All I know for a fact is that most of the conservation work that has been done in the past 75 years has been done with the money hunters and fishers have spent on licenses. This is one of the first bills that will spread out the responsibility of protecting and preserving our natural resources to all of the folks who enjoy them.
This is great news and way overdue. If you value wild places and the creatures that live there, this is a very big deal. Google “Great American Outdoors Act” and thank the folks who made it happen. It bears repeating, Today is a very great day and conservation interests have waited since 1964 to see it.
Scott Rall, Worthington, is a habitat conservationist, avid hunting and fishing enthusiast and is president of Nobles County Pheasants Forever. He can be reached at scottarall@gmail.com. or on Twitter @habitat champion.