Today full and permanent funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) was signed into law when President Trump signed the Great American Outdoors Act. The historic conservation legislation fully funds the LWCF at a level of $900 million every year and provides billions of dollars to address the approximately $20 billion maintenance backlog on federal public lands, which includes projects at our National Parks and trails that need paving, roads that are crumbling, and visitors centers in disrepair.
“The President signing the Great American Outdoors Act into law today completes decades of bipartisan work to secure full and permanent funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund and conserve, protect, and invest in our nation’s treasured places,” Republican Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado said. “This is the greatest conservation achievement in generations, one that will benefit every state and help communities in need recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. The Great American Outdoors Act will create well over 100,000 jobs nationwide and thousands of jobs in Colorado in our mountain towns and recreation communities that were hit hard by the pandemic. With the President’s signature today and the supermajorities of support in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives, our nation’s leaders came together during these trying times in a bipartisan fashion to provide jobs for the American people, economic stimulus to communities in need, and protections that will ensure we can enjoy the great American outdoors the way they were meant to be enjoyed.”
