Working together with The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) Coalition, we created this episode to show our support of this vital conservation program.
The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), is a 50-year old law that is the nation’s most important conservation tool for protecting our shared outdoor heritage, and is set to expire next year. Despite the fact that it does not use a dime of taxpayer money (it’s funded by a small portion of off-shore drilling royalty payments), some in Congress have proposed to eliminate all of its funding.
Congaree National Park is protected by LWCF and is a shining example of what LWCF can accomplish. The most recent acquisition here was of the Riverstone property, which has been enthusiastically embraced by local middle school students and demonstrates how LWCF safeguards places for our kids to experience the great outdoors. This property is now part of a much larger conservation corridor of federal and state lands along the Congaree, Wateree and upper Santee rivers, showing how a small federal investment can yield big benefits.
But for decades, Washington politicians have raided the LWCF trust fund, using its dedicated resources to fund a variety of unrelated government projects. This annual shortfall has resulted in a huge backlog of unmet funding needs for land protection and outdoor recreation for federal public lands, and state and local parks. Despite rarely receiving its due, LWCF has been instrumental in preserving the places that are most dear to us as a nation.
If you care about the future of our public lands, an outdoor industry that employs more than 6 million Americans, access to the best hunting and fishing areas, working forests that keep jobs in the woods, close to home recreation that gives kids safe places to play, watersheds that provide safe drinking water to our cities and towns or any of the myriad other benefits of our country’s premier federal conservation program, you should speak up now for LWCF!
Please visit the LWCF website and “like” them on Facebook for more information and to stay up to date on the campaign to fully fund LWCF.
