Land and Water Conservation Fund

Floor Speech

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Mr. LOWENTHAL. Mr. Speaker, I thank Ranking Member Grijalva for calling us together for this Special Order hour to highlight the need for the Land and Water Conservation Fund and for his leadership in seeking a permanent reauthorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

As has been pointed out, the Land and Water Conservation Fund is far and away our Nation's most important conservation program. The LWCF is a popular and successful bipartisan program for the conservation and protection of America's irreplaceable natural, historic, cultural, and outdoor landmarks.

Over its 50-year history, the fund has conserved more than 5 million acres for parks, for recreation, for forests, for refuges, and for other land through the Federal program, but that is just part of the LWCF. Also, more than 2.6 million acres has been saved in communities throughout every State in the Nation.

It has conserved iconic landscapes in every State. It is responsible for more than 40,000 State and local outdoor recreational projects at no cost, as has been pointed out, to the American taxpayer. In fact, according to a recent economic analysis, every dollar invested in the conservation of public lands through the LWCF leads to $4 in economic activities to local communities.

Our Nation's conserved public lands are the essential infrastructure for a vibrant outdoor recreational economy that contributes over $646 billion to the economy each year and supports more than 1 in every 15 jobs in the United States.

That economic activity and job creation plays out locally all over the country, not only in the broad service and manufacturing sectors, but in the thousands upon thousands of recreational destination areas and the gateway communities where we all go to enjoy the outdoors. My home State of California has received more than $2.3 billion in LWCF funding over the past five decades, which has helped to protect some of our State's most treasured places.

The Land and Water Conservation Fund also plays a crucial role in building up the ability of our lands to reduce the damages caused by climate change. Our network of public lands plays a critical role in addressing the challenges that climate change poses to our forests, fish and wildlife, and riparian resources. America's forests naturally capture a remarkable 13 percent of U.S. carbon emissions each year, but the U.S. Forest Service projects that private forests, storing more than 2 billion tons of carbon, are at risk of development in addition. Coastal wetlands, we also know, can lessen the damages caused by major storms, and land conservation in the wildland-urban interface can reduce home losses from major fires.

Continued investment in the Land and Water Conservation Fund will be essential to help us buffer the impacts of a changing climate. If funding is allowed to expire, the American public will lose one of our greatest tools to ensure the protection of our public lands and waters and the ability of everyone to go outside and to enjoy these wonderful resources. We simply cannot let that happen.

Congress must honor the bipartisan commitment it made over 50 years ago and ensure that our children and our grandchildren get to enjoy America's treasured outdoor spaces the same way we have been able to enjoy those spaces. We must permanently reauthorize the LWCF.

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