This crown jewel of the Trump Administration’s environmental record will bring many benefits
Duggan Flanakin
To the surprise of most Americans, and
the consternation of many in the “mainstream” media, Vice President Mike Pence highlighted
the Trump Administration’s environmental record during the recent VP debate. Citing the President’s signing of the historic bill, Mr. Pence lauded
the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA) as “the largest
investment in our public lands and public parks in 100 years.”
The Associated Press said the GAOA is the “most
significant conservation legislation enacted in nearly half a century.” The National Parks Conservation
Association called it “a conservationist’s dream.”
Harvard Business School professor
Linda Bilmes agreed, calling the GAOA “the biggest land conservation
legislation in a generation.” Bilmes, who served as Assistant Secretary of
Commerce in the Clinton Administration, marveled that the Trump Administration won
broad bipartisan support in a polarized Congress, after the President
reevaluated his own stance on this groundbreaking environmental and
conservationist initiative.
Bilmes explained that the new law
has two major effects. First, the new National Park and Public Lands Legacy
Restoration Fund will provide up to $9 billion over the next five years to address
deferred maintenance issues in national parks, wildlife refuges, forests and
other federal areas, with $6.5 billion earmarked specifically to the 419 National
Park units. Second, the GAOA guarantees the statutory
maximum of $900 million per year in perpetuity for the Land and Water
Conservation Fund (LWCF).
Bilmes explained
that Congress has been stingy with parks funding, despite a doubling of annual
park visitors since 1980 (excluding the COVID-marred 2020 season). Thanks to
the GAOA, the $12 billion backlog of maintenance to repair roads, trails,
campgrounds, monuments, fire safety, utilities and visitor center infrastructure
will finally be addressed. Similarly, the LWCF, established in 1964 with an
annual maximum authorization level of $900 million, has typically received less
than half of that amount.
The flagship LWCF conservation
program is paid for with royalty payments from offshore oil and gas production
in federal waters. It helps fund the National Park Service, U.S. Forest
Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, and Bureau of Land Management. It also
provides grants to state and local governments to acquire land for recreation
and conservation. Yet many self-described environmental advocates want to shut
down offshore oil activities.
An early
beneficiary of the GAOA is the state of California, which will benefit from
GAOA funding that provides the 50% federal share of a new program aimed at
reducing wildfire risks. Both California and the U.S. Forest Service will treat
at least half a million acres of forest land per year under a 20-year plan for
forest health and vegetation – by reducing the fuel buildups that lead to monstrous conflagrations.
The Agreement for Shared
Stewardship
of California’s Forest and Rangelands, lauded by President Trump and California
Governor Gavin Newsom, is a joint state-federal initiative to reduce
wildfire risks, restore watersheds, and protect habitat and biological
diversity. Sadly, Congressional bickering delayed its passage such that it came
too late to help mitigate this summer’s wildfires, which caused major damage to endangered and threatened species and
their habitat in California and other Western states.
The
California-federal agreement requires prioritizing
public safety, using real science to guide forest management, coordinating land
management across jurisdictions, increasing the scale and pace of forest
management projects, removing barriers that slow project approvals, and working
closely with all stakeholders: local and tribal communities, environmental
groups, academics, timber companies and others. Additional activities under the
agreement include recycling forest byproducts to avoid burning slash piles,
improving sustainable recreation opportunities, and stabilizing rural
economies.
Bilmes credited the strong
bipartisan support (3 to 1 margins in both houses of Congress) to the political
and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. She noted that in normal
years park visitor spending contributes about $40 billion to the U.S. economy
and supports nearly 350,000 jobs. The GAOA will give a huge shot in the arm to
communities struggling due to the loss of tourism-related jobs and income, by
creating over 108,000 new jobs for repairing park infrastructure, including lodges,
trails, access roads and bridges in the adjacent communities.
Bilmes
estimates that the American people value national park land, waters and
programs at $92 billion per year – at least 30 times the annual budget they
receive from Congress. Yet, like many critics of other Trump land management
decisions, she fails to appreciate that reopening small sections of public
lands with lower aesthetic value to income producing activities will provide
the revenue needed to pay for the increased budgets for these
national treasures.
Similarly,
cutbacks in offshore oil and gas activities would drastically shrink the very
federal revenues needed to pay $900 million per year to the LWCF, to support
federal land management programs.
This crown jewel of the Trump Administration’s environmental record will bring many benefits
Duggan Flanakin
Critics
of Trump policies also ignore the fact that the United States is reducing carbon dioxide emissions at an annual rate of more than 2% and has
lowered emissions of criteria pollutants by 7% since the beginning of 2017,
primarily because fracking is producing
low-cost natural gas to replace coal in generating electricity, Mr. Pence pointed
out during his debate.
Reducing
wildfire infernos is another excellent way to reduce CO2 emissions, as well as
real pollution like smoke and fine particulates (soot). Emissions from these forest fires are astronomical and can travel hundreds
or even thousands of miles from the fires.
Pence
also cited a record number of completed Superfund cleanups during the four
years he and President Trump have been in office, along with a record number of
recovered endangered species.
Reflecting
the President’s view that parks are for the people, the Vice President also
lauded the Interior Department’s opening of over 4 million acres of Fish and
Wildlife Service lands for hunting and fishing, and relocating the Bureau of
Land Management headquarters to Grand Junction, CO, much closer to the vast
majority of the vast federal lands it administers, nearly all in the western
states.
Lastly,
Pence cited the Modern Fish Act, signed in January 2019, which for the first
time in federal law recognizes the differences between
recreational and commercial saltwater fishing. The act also adds more
appropriate management tools for policymakers to use in managing diverse federal
recreational fisheries.
The
popular legislation “provides an opportunity for significant, positive change
on behalf of millions of recreational anglers who enjoy fishing in federal
waters,” noted Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation president Jeff Crane.
Despite
the bipartisan nature of these major accomplishments, and their importance to
America and its magnificent natural heritage, media coverage of the GAOA
signing made it quite clear that mainstream reporters were loath to give any
credit to President Trump. That’s sad but not unexpected.
Whether
acquiring more and more federal land is a good thing, in view of the often less
than stellar way existing landholdings have been managed in recent years, only
time will tell. But these new laws and joint federal-state-local-tribal land management
initiatives are a solid step in the right direction.
Duggan Flanakin is Director of Policy Research at the
Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org)
