By Bo Erickson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Federal land conservation projects around southern Idaho’s rivers and lakes, famous for rainbow trout and smallmouth bass, are in limbo along with dozens of conservation projects nationwide, according to advocates, who worry they may not be completed by President Donald Trump’s administration this year.
The delays — caused by the administration’s decision to hold up as much as $287 million in congressionally approved funding — are hitting a program Trump himself signed significant investments for in 2020, at the time comparing himself to former President Theodore Roosevelt, an icon of the conservation movement who played a key role in building the National Park Service.
Bryan Woodhouse of Idaho’s Magic Valley Fly Fishers club said he welcomed plans to expand the nearby Minidoka National Wildlife Refuge and the Craters of the Moon National Monument with a combined 2,500 acres (1,012 hectares), just two of the projects in the pipeline for the Interior Department to possibly acquire before the federal fiscal year ends on September 30.
“This new land would add in areas that we can perpetuate and keep them for our great-grandkids,” said Woodhouse, a retired biomedical researcher. “There are trophy fish in this area.”
Trump came into office vowing to sharply cut the federal government, and his administration has repeatedly sought not to spend money previously authorized by Congress.
But unlike many other government actions funded through taxpayer dollars, the purchases made by the Land and Water Conservation Fund are paid with revenue from offshore oil and gas leases. A portion of the land acquisitions is meant to increase hunting, fishing, and wildlife observation opportunities.
Congress earlier this year approved more than $287 million for the Interior Department’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service to carry out the land and water projects and fund associated costs. Projects pursued by lawmakers spanned 38 states, from connecting existing public lands in Florida’s Everglades to shoring up former Montana timberlands for recreation like snowmobiling and cross-country skiing.
With those purchases on hold, conservationists worry that some private landholders – whose land the federal fund would purchase — may choose to sell to other buyers, including those who would commercially develop the land.
“Land protection projects like these are deals in progress with willing sellers, and we are going to lose these deals if the government can’t be relied upon to meet its own expectations,” said Amy Lindholm, national coordinator for the LWCF Coalition and director of federal affairs at the Appalachian Mountain Club.
Asked if Trump is committed to using the LWCF money for land expansion projects this year, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said, “President Trump is unleashing American energy while simultaneously allowing our nation’s natural beauty to be enjoyed for generations to come. This includes funding projects that expand Americans’ access to the great outdoors, as authorized by the Land and Water Conservation Fund.”
‘LANDMARK LEGISLATION’
Trump in August 2020 signed the Great American Outdoors Act, a bipartisan law that made permanent $900 million each year for the Land and Water Conservation Fund to acquire and maintain federal public lands.
“We’re here today to celebrate the passage of truly landmark legislation that will preserve America’s majestic natural wonders … This is a very big deal,” Trump said at the 2020 bill signing, “And from an environmental standpoint and from just the beauty of our country standpoint, there hasn’t been anything like this since Teddy Roosevelt, I suspect.”
But in May, Trump’s Interior Department proposed in its budget for next year that “instead of adding more land and infrastructure to the federal government’s already bloated real property portfolio,” hundreds of millions of dollars should be rerouted away from new land acquisition to cover current maintenance costs.
Interior’s budget plan was rejected in a bipartisan way by the House and Senate appropriations committees in recent legislative discussions, but underscores the administration’s testing of federal funding powers, which the Constitution grants to Congress.
“The Trump Administration is now blatantly defying the law by failing to provide Congress with detailed spending plans or timelines on Land and Water Conservation Fund projects,” Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, the top Senate Democrat overseeing the Interior Department’s funding, said in a statement, “It should outrage all of us who care about protecting and preserving our public lands.”
Changes to public land have some support in Congress, including Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah, the chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, who argues Washington is unable to maintain current land and pushed this year to sell millions of acres of public lands to make way for necessary housing development.
The Department of Interior is still promoting the 46,000 projects from the fund in every county in the country since 1965.
“There is a huge conservationist legacy for President Trump in signing permanent, dedicated funding of LWCF into law, and all that is in jeopardy from what the current administration is proposing to do,” said Lindholm, the conservation advocate. “To save that legacy, the president will need to make very clear to the agencies that the LWCF is off limits.”
(Reporting by Bo Erickson; editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)
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