The United States Congress passed a long-awaited, comprehensive bill to continually fund national, state and local parks, a huge conservation aid, and one of the few major laws the government has been able to pass in a divisive election year.
The Great American Outdoors Act, passed Wednesday afternoon, allocates $ 9.5 billion over the next five years for previously neglected park repairs. And it sets $ 900m a year to acquire land for conservation and continue maintenance.
“Parks are at the core of access to nature, and we’ve seen them especially important during the coronavirus, where communities of color are less likely to live within walking distance of a park, let alone a national park,” he said. Shanna Edberg. the director of conservation programs for the Hispanic Access Foundation. “The beginning of the solution to that is the public land fund.”
After years in limbo of the financing plan, Donald Trump surprised lawmakers when he agreed to endorse it in March. The Senate passed the legislation with bipartisan support in June. Now he will head to the White House for Trump’s signature.
About 9 million more people visited national parks in 2019 than in 2018. However, national parks like Yellowstone and Grand Canyon have a large backlog of work that teams have been unable to do, leading to the collapse of historic buildings and the closure of trails.
A 2018 National Park Service report detailed at least $ 11.9 billion in overdue maintenance and repair needs for the more than 5,690 miles of paved roads, 21,000 miles of trails, and 25,000 buildings.
The Appalachian National Scenic Trail needs about $ 17 million to upgrade the trails. The Cape Cod National Seashore could use $ 55 million for deferred maintenance on paved roads, structures and buildings. Death Valley National Park, which receives 1.7 million visitors a year, needs $ 129 million. Seventy percent of the $ 9.5 billion will go to park service projects; the rest will go to other federal agencies like the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Office of Indian Education.
The legislation will also permanently allocate $ 900 million annually to the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), which is used to maintain and purchase parkland. Since the fund’s inception in 1965, it has only been fully funded twice. Last year, for example, Congress allocated just $ 435 million.
An influx of funds will ensure the preservation of numerous beautiful landscapes and historical sites. In New Mexico, the money means upgrades to Valles Caldera, a native volcanic area of Pueblo, among other preserved lands.
In Colorado, the forest service is prioritizing LWCF funds to buy and make publicly accessible historic caves used by the Ute people, which is one of two known sites with petroglyphs, or rock engravings, that record the history of the tribe. The state will use money to make roads that meet the guidelines of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Proponents also hope that the funding can help complete the Continental Divide Trail (CDT), a 3,100-mile trail from Mexico to Canada. About 730 miles of the trail must be relocated off-road, and 172 miles of the trail must be placed under public protection. Amanda Wheelock of the Continental Divide Trail Coalition, a nonprofit organization working to protect the trail, said completing the trail will also stimulate small businesses along the trail by attracting more visitors.
“You are not going to earn $ 1 million attracting 400 hikers per year. What she’s really going to make money from is attracting the family who live in Virginia and who hear about CDT and want to take a whole week of vacation, ”Wheelock said.
Critics of the law, most of them cattle associations from 26 states, cited problems with a clause in the LWCF That allows 40% of the fund, or $ 360 million, to be used to buy land in the United States. They argue that more than 640 million acres of government-owned land is sufficient.
“If passed, the GAO Act condemns hundreds of millions of acres of American land to a poorly managed future,” the groups wrote in a letter to the Senate leadership on June 8.
Some conservationists also argue that because the new funds come from the revenue of the energy industry, national parks are protected at the expense of the weather. Others say that using fossil fuel money for conservation means a victory.
In any case, Wheelock said the coronavirus pandemic had only increased the importance of protecting natural spaces.
“That is the only thing that will always be there for us, that we can go out and continue doing that safely with our families, that is what we can hold on to if we protect those places,” he said. “I would like to think that the broad support for this bill is an acknowledgment that money is needed to protect these places.”
