Chairman Bishop's LWCF draft: This may go to extra innings

By Steve Moyer

The Hon. Rob Bishop, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, one of the most important committees in Congress for trout and salmon conservation and sportsmen’s issues, has had a lot to say about the Land and Water Conservation Fund reauthorization this year. Yesterday, we got our first look at Chairman Bishop’s proposal for the future of the program.  

Following a good once-over of his draft LWCF reauthorization bill, the “Protecting America’s Recreation and Conservation Act” (PARC Act), I’d have to say that we trout anglers had hoped for a lot better. But to use a sports analogy that I hope Chairman Bishop—an enthusiastic baseball fan—might appreciate, “It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish.” It is our fervent hope that this draft will get a lot better before the last out in the bottom of the 9th, and that a long and prosperous LWCF reauthorization will be secured to sustain our outdoor sporting heritage.

Chairman Bishop has been a high school history teacher and a baseball coach. Are there two finer occupations on this earth? My Mom was elementary school teacher, and my Dad was a little league coach. I know about teachers and coaches. They know how to get improvements, “coach up” kids to surmount tough challenges, work with people, and get stuff done.

We’ll need to put a lot of those virtues in play with this draft. The draft bill would make a host of unneeded changes to an extremely successful program. It will take all nine innings, and maybe a few more, to get it on track. But it’s worth the effort.

In our view, the LWCF has been an MVP-type of program, quietly grinding out a list of incredible land and water conservation achievements for half a century. When you take the time to look at the breathtaking scope of success of the LWCF, virtually every national forest, national wildlife refuge, national park, or tract of BLM land that we love in every state has directly or indirectly benefitted from a LWCF-funded land acquisition or easement purchase. Recently, TU worked with the state of Tennessee, The Nature Conservancy and local conservationists to protect the Rocky Fork property in that state, a honey of a parcel of prime brook trout habitat that has been added to the Cherokee National Forest. It’s just one of hundreds of hits produced by the LWCF.

We’re disappointed that the PARC Act would stray far from that effective formula. It would divert LWCF funds to pay for a lot of other things besides habitat and access, including operations and maintenance of federal lands and properties, payment in lieu of taxes to counties, and training of offshore oil and gas workers, to name a few. All of these, and others in the draft, are, or may be, completely legitimate goals when considered by themselves. But surely the chairman and the committee can address them in other ways instead of diverting precious LWCF dollars to them.

On the plus side, the chairman has started the legislative process on the House side. It’s late in the game—LWCF authorization has expired but appropriations bills continue to keep the program, tenuously, alive—but better late than never.  

The PARC Act is a “discussion draft.” In Congress-speak, that generally means the sponsor’s “feet are not set in stone,” that robust discussion and constructive changes to the draft are welcome.

The PARC Act would reauthorize the LWCF at $900 million. Congress must make sure that amount is actually appropriated each year, rather than the insufficient $300 million or so that has been provided in recent years.

We’re hoping that Chairman Bishop will also keep in mind the incredible bipartisan support that LWCF reauthorization has garnered in the past year. In the Senate, the Energy and Natural Resources Committee passed the Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2015 in July, a bipartisan bill that contains a simple, straightforward reauthorization of the LWCF program without any of the diversions contemplated by the PARC Act draft. Numerous members of both parties have supported reauthorization of the LWCF. Such strong bipartisan support for a natural resources bill in the Congress is as rare as a no-hitter these days.

And surely Chairman Bishop appreciates Will Rogers’ old cliché, “Buy land, they ain’t making any more.” That’s exactly what the LWCF allows state and federal resource agencies to do, from willing sellers, for the most vital factors–land and water—for all of our conservation work and fishing and hunting access efforts nationwide.

Sportsmen overwhelmingly support, and deeply love, the LWCF program. We want to see a straightforward reauthorization of it as soon as possible. Chairman Bishop has set a hearing for the PARC Act draft bill for Nov. 18th. As he is asking to hear from us, I urge all sportsmen to tell Chairman Bishop to move a straightforward reauthorization bill through his committee as soon as possible.   

Steve Moyer is TU’s vice president for government affairs. He works from our Arlington, Va., headquarters.