Conscious Choice: Investing in Lands for Our Future

April 1999 | News of the Earth

Investing in Lands for Our Future

by Dave Aftandilian

In 1964, Congress created the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) to help federal, state, and local governments purchase and protect land for parks and other open space preserves and recreation areas. So far, money from the LWCF has saved more than five million acres of land and water resources, including parts of the Appalachian Trail, Redwoods National Park, Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, and Illinois Beach State Park. More than two million acres of that total were acquired by state and local governments through LWCF’s innovative matching grants program, which has provided $3.2 billion for land acquisition and wildlife and habitat protection.

Originally Congress planned to use revenues from sales of surplus federal property, motorboat fuel taxes, and fees for recreational uses of federal lands to fund the LWCF. But when these sources proved insufficient, Congress authorized use of part of the royalties from offshore oil and gas drilling leases on the Outer Continental Shelf. These royalties currently amount to more than $4 billion annually, $900 million of which is supposed to be set aside for the LWCF each year according to legislation enacted in 1977. Unfortunately, these funds are distributed as part of the annual allocation process, and Congress has seldom voted for full funding of the LWCF. Last year, only $328 million was given to the LWCF, and the state and local matching grants program has not received any funding at all since 1995. Over the past 15 years, more than $11 billion has been diverted from the LWCF — primarily to fund deficit reduction.

After years of neglect, fortunes may finally be turning around for the LWCF. President Clinton has proposed full funding of the LWCF as part of his fiscal year 2000 budget, and two bills have been introduced in Congress to establish a more permanent funding basis for the LWCF. Since both House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott have promised that an LWCF bill will pass Congress this session, it’s likely that some sort of LWCF reform will happen by 2000. The question is whether we’ll pass a good reform bill or a bad one.

While President Clinton’s budget proposal doesn’t specify future funding for the LWCF, it does contain a detailed breakdown of the administration’s plan to spend $1 billion on a Lands Legacy Initiative in fiscal year 2000. If approved, this would be the most ever spent on land conservation in a single year. The total includes $588 million in matching grants for state and local governments, private land trusts, etc. Such matching grants could be used, for instance, to purchase and restore parts of the Lake Calumet region of the far south side of Chicago — a long-time goal of many area conservation organizations that want to see the natural and historic treasures of Calumet protected.

The Clinton administration’s plan would make for an excellent year of land preservation to start the new millennium, but congressional action will be required to secure the future of the LWCF and our public lands. Two very different bills have already been introduced to take up the preservation gauntlet thrown down by the administration, and others may follow.

First the bad news: S25/HR701, the Conservation and Reinvestment Act of 1999, spearheaded by Mary L. Landrieu (D-LA) and Frank H. Murkowski (R-AK) in the Senate and by Don Young (R-AK) and John Dingell (D-MI) in the House. Although this bill would provide significantly increased funding for the LWCF over current levels, it also contains potentially crippling restrictions on how and where the money could be spent. Instead of allowing purchase and protection of land wherever it’s most endangered, S25/HR701 only allows agencies to buy lands already within designated park boundaries. Furthermore, two-thirds of all purchases would have to occur east of the 100th meridian (which runs through the Dakotas, Kansas, and Texas). This would make it very difficult to protect key lands in the West.

An even more disturbing aspect of this bill are the potential incentives it contains for increased offshore oil drilling. Title I of the bill, Coastal Impact Assistance, would "assist" states affected by offshore oil and gas drilling at funding levels (from a total of $756 million) in part determined by proximity to and number of drill wells. A state closer to more wells would get more money — perversely encouraging states to allow more of these high-impact wells to be drilled. Furthermore, monies allocated to coastal resource protection under this title could be spent for "infrastructure," a vague term that could allow virtually any kind of development, such as road construction, to be funded instead of habitat protection and restoration.

A better bet for those who want to preserve critical lands instead of developing them is HR798/S446, Permanent Protection for America’s Resources 2000 (Resources 2000 Act for short), introduced by Rep. George Miller (D-CA) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA). This bill has already garnered the support of an impressive roster of environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society, Natural Resources Defense Council, U.S. PIRG, Defenders of Wildlife, National Audubon Society, and the National Parks and Conservation Association.

The Resources 2000 Act would provide full funding of $900 million to the LWCF, half for direct federal land purchases, and half for matching grants to states. It would also allocate $1.4 billion to other conservation programs at the federal, state, and local levels, including preservation of farmland and open space, restoration of fish and wildlife, and urban parks and recreation. And it provides neither perverse incentives for development of more offshore oil and gas wells, nor crippling restrictions on where land could be purchased.

As Defenders of Wildlife President Rodger Schlickeisen put it, "Implementation of Permanent Protection for America’s Resources 2000 would be a dream come true for conservationists and truly usher in a new millennium for wildlife." With Congress in a rare spirit of bipartisan cooperation on the issue, now is perhaps our best chance to protect critical wildlands for generations to come.

All of us can help by contacting our elected officials and asking them to support the Resources 2000 Act (HR798/S446) and to oppose the Conservation and Reinvestment Act of 1999 (S25/HR701). You can call your congressional delegates through the main switchboard at 202-224-3121. Write Senator Dick Durbin and Senator Peter Fitzgerald at U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C., 20510, and write your representative at U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., 20515.

National

Disturbed by the clearcutting of old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest, British Columbia, the Amazon, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere, Greenpeace, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Rainforest Action Network came up with an innovative counterattack. Joining forces as the Coastal Rainforest Coalition, they sent a letter to top executives of major U.S. corporations urging them to eliminate their use of wood and paper products manufactured from old-growth forests. They then took out a full-page ad in the New York Times last December to praise the 27 corporations who had pledged not to use products made from old-growth wood, and to point the finger of blame at those who refused to sign on.

Since then, coalition members have continued discussions with the non-signers, encouraging them to reconsider their position. One of the most notorious is Home Depot, which told the Rainforest Action Network at the beginning of March that it "does not intend to develop an old growth policy, and never will." Others who refused to sign include AT&T and Wal-Mart.

You can contact the CEO of Home Depot, Arthur Blank, at 770-384-2733, or 2455 Paces Ferry Road, Atlanta, GA, 30339. For more information, call the Rainforest Action Network at 415-398-4404 or visit their web site at www.coalition4bc.org.

Illinois

Two downstate legislators recently came up with an ingenious way to get rid of rare species they believed were holding up lucrative development projects in their districts: draft a law removing them from the Illinois threatened and endangered species list. Rep. Kurt Granberg (D-Carlyle) and Rep. Larry Woolard (D-Carterville) cosponsored HB 2243, which in its original form would have cut the massasauga rattlesnake, the Indiana crayfish, and the least brook lamprey from the list, bypassing established scientific and public review procedures for delisting species.

HB 2243 will make it easier for Sportsman’s Park President Charles Bidwill III to build a planned $7.8 million resort along the shores of Carlyle Lake (about 45 miles east of St. Louis), currently occupied by the largest population of massasauga rattlesnakes in the state, and for the city of Marion to make a reservoir out of the formerly free-flowing Sugar Creek, home to some of Illinois’ last remaining Indiana crayfish and least brook lampreys. Because they require clear, fast-running streams, the crayfish and lampreys could not survive in the proposed Marion reservoir. And as for the massasauga, Chris Phillips of the Illinois Natural History Survey said that HB 2243 "dooms it. It is gone from the state in five years, maybe ten. It loses to whatever development comes at it next." Perhaps even more importantly, though, HB 2243 sets a dangerous precedent, with potentially catastrophic consequences for any endangered species in Illinois. As Tim Schweizer of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (DNR) put it to me, "we’re in opposition because [HB 2243] doesn’t take into account that species are on the [endangered] list because of science. In our view it is inappropriate to take species off the list (or add them to it) without the proper scientific review and public comment process."

Although HB 2243 passed committee by a large margin in early March, concerted efforts by environmental groups, the Illinois DNR, and others resulted in vast improvements before it came up for a vote before the full House. Instead of delisting species outright, the bill now gives the Illinois DNR the ability to grant an "incidental take" permit that would allow individuals of an endangered species to be killed in the course of development if this would not jeopardize the survival of the species as a whole. Obviously any bill that permits the killing of members of threatened and endangered species does not represent a particularly favorable outcome for those species or the local ecosystems in which they might play a crucial role, but such provisions already exist in the national and most state endangered species laws, and at least this bill allows the Illinois DNR (and concerned citizens) a voice in the process. However, the backdoor nature of HB 2243 as it was originally conceived, as well as its final shape, rankled the Illinois Sierra Club and other environmental groups. Jack Darin, Illinois State Field Representative for the Sierra Club, told me that "nobody is very happy about the way this process has worked. Everyone would have rather discussed incidental take in the context of other improvements to the [Illinois threatened and endangered species] act."

The Illinois House passed HB 2243 on March 24. The Illinois Senate will likely consider the bill sometime in April.

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