{"id":66075,"date":"2020-02-28T15:18:18","date_gmt":"2020-02-28T22:18:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/trump-administration-proposes-eliminating-funding-for-land-and-water-conservation-fund\/"},"modified":"2020-02-28T22:18:18","modified_gmt":"2020-02-28T22:18:18","slug":"trump-administration-proposes-eliminating-funding-for-land-and-water-conservation-fund","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/trump-administration-proposes-eliminating-funding-for-land-and-water-conservation-fund\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump administration proposes eliminating funding for Land and Water Conservation Fund"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A crew member with Horizon Environmental Services walks through an area of the Perins Peak Wildlife Area northwest of Durango in 2010. The Trump administration is proposing cutting federal dollars to the Land and Water Conservation Fund.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The U.S. Department of Agriculture\u2019s proposed budget for the U.S. Forest Service completely eliminates funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund and the Collaborative Forest Restoration Program.<\/p>\n

The Land and Water Conservation Fund has disbursed $272 million for recreation and conservation projects over the past 50 years in Colorado, and the proposed budget cuts are at odds with the U.S. Senate\u2019s overwhelming support for the program.<\/p>\n

The fund was permanently reauthorized last year by Congress, and legislation is pending to provide permanent federal funding for the program, since the forests protected by the programs provide clean drinking water and recreation areas for states like Colorado.<\/p>\n

The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources questioned the chief of the USDA\u2019s Forest Service, Victoria Christiansen, about the proposed budget cuts during a hearing Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t tell you how popular that program is,\u201d Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., said of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. It is \u201cthe one place where you get sportsmen and conservationists on the same page,\u201d Heinrich said.<\/p>\n

Mark Pearson, executive director of the San Juan Citizens Alliance, said the proposed budget cuts to the Land and Water Conservation Fund are as \u201cdramatic of a disconnect from public sentiment as you can find.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEliminating funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund would sabotage months of work that so many stakeholders have put into the San Juan National Forest,\u201d Pearson said.<\/p>\n

In northern Colorado, Sweetwater Lake and the 488 acres of land around it above the Colorado River have been popular camping grounds for many years. When residential developers eyed buying the property, the Conservation Fund and Eagle Valley Land Trust joined the White River National Forest to apply for $9 million from the Land and Water Conservation Fund to buy and protect the land.<\/p>\n

But the project is pending, and for President Donald Trump\u2019s administration, land protection is not a priority, Christiansen said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome difficult choices and trade-offs were made in this budget decision,\u201d Christiansen testified.<\/p>\n

\"Gardner\"
Gardner<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

But Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., doesn\u2019t see a complete lack of funding as a trade-off.<\/p>\n

Gardner said counties in Colorado like Summit County passed a tax increase to pay for things that the USDA won\u2019t, such as a firefighter staff to prevent and mitigate wildfires.<\/p>\n

\u201cBillions are being shouldered by the community\u201d for wildfire prevention methods like large air tankers, Gardner said during the hearing.<\/p>\n

These air tankers can put out fires in a single day, instead of allowing them to burn for 20 days, Gardner said in a brief interview with The Durango Herald<\/em> after the meeting. Appropriate funding for wildfire mitigation from the USDA is important to prevent tax increases, he said.<\/p>\n

Christiansen testified that the USDA \u201cwill have the most air tankers we\u2019ve had in 10 years this fire season.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike Lester, state forester and director of the Colorado State Forest Service, said 40% of his budget comes from federal funding, so this is a \u201cbig deal for Colorado.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Land and Water Conservation Fund supports the Forest Legacy easement program, which gives the state the development rights on historic forest lands. People can live on the land and even graze their cattle, but if the state owns the development rights, it protects the land from being developed for condos.<\/p>\n

\u201cDevelopment pressure hops around in ways that surprise you,\u201d Lester told the Herald<\/em>. Big chunks of undeveloped forest land protect Colorado\u2019s clean air and water, and provide a source of carbon sequestration.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if you never set foot on that land, you benefit from it,\u201d Lester said.<\/p>\n

Executive Director of the Colorado Timber Association Molly Pitts said more support is needed from the Collaborative Forest Restoration Program for active forest management, especially for staffing at the Forest Service to prevent and mitigate wildfires.<\/p>\n

While the Natural Resource Conservation Service does a lot, there is \u201cnever enough funding,\u201d Pitts said.<\/p>\n

And Lester said the NRCS is \u201cnever going to have enough money to do what we need to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe take the money we have, and we are pretty strategic with it, but limiting that money is not helpful,\u201d Lester said.<\/p>\n

Because of the strong bipartisan support in Congress for both the Land and Water Conservation Fund and the Collaborative Forest Restoration Program, Pearson and Lester both said the proposed budget cuts are dead on arrival, and the Senate Appropriations Committee will not approve it.<\/p>\n

Pearson said the budget shows \u201cwhat the interests of the Trump administration are,\u201d which is resource extraction over research and conservation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do important work for Colorado with that funding,\u201d Lester said.<\/p>\n

Emily Hayes is a graduate student at American University in Washington, D.C., and an intern for The Durango Herald.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Congress unlikely to support proposed budget cuts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":66076,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,1137,28,194,29,976,24],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-66075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines","tag-land-resources","tag-newsletter","tag-outdoor-recreation","tag-u-s-sen-cory-gardner"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66075"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=66075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}