President's Budget is Out of Touch With American Conservation Values, Says The Wilderness Society

2/2/2004

From: Pete Rafle, 202-429-2642, Bonnie Galvin, 202-429-2681, both of The Wilderness Society

WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 -- The following is a statement by Bonnie Galvin, director, Budget and Appropriations Programs, The Wilderness Society, on President Bush's budget:

The President's Budget showcases the Administration's real priorities for the year. That's because, once all the talking is over, what gets funded is what gets done. This year, the budget lays out a disturbing under-investment in the parks, forests and wildlife refuges that form a critical piece of what makes America a beautiful and unique country. This budget weakens protection of America's lands and includes provisions that would make it easier to sell public lands for private profit. Then it adds insult to injury by using 'smoke and mirrors' budget tricks to try to mask these cuts.

Clearing away the sleight-of-hand, this budget:

-- Falls far short (to the tune of almost $600 million) of the President's claim that he is "fully funding" the Land and Water Conservation fund;

-- Assumes revenue from opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling; and

-- Opens the door for a sell-off of wildlands managed by the Bureau of Land Management.

In good times and in bad, we have always invested in the places and wildlife that make America special. This budget is out of touch with mainstream American values and priorities. Americans want and deserve a consistent commitment to conservation spending.

Shortchanging the Land and Water Conservation Fund

Once again, the Administration's budget seeks to take credit for "fully funding" the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) at $900 million, while actually providing only one-third of the money needed for the purpose. LWCF is organized around a simple principle - take some of the money our government raises each year by extracting natural resources owned by the taxpayer and use it to protect other important natural resources. LWCF has for decades been our nation's premiere tool to create and preserve parks, forests, wildlife refuges and open space. It is so popular that, during the 2000 campaign, then-Governor Bush promised to fully fund it. But this budget provides only $314 million for LWCF's real programs - federal land acquisition and stateside grants (managed by the National Park Service). It then tries to disguise this shortfall by shoehorning more than a dozen other, ongoing programs under the LWCF name.

Conservation Trust Fund

It didn't have to be this way. In 2000, a bipartisan Congress enacted a roughly $2 billion/year conservation funding mechanism called the Conservation Trust Fund, designed to ensure that, in good times and in bad, the country always had enough money to meet our most important conservation, recreation, wildlife and preservation needs. But this budget abandons the Conservation Trust Fund, with the result that our parks, forests and other wild lands will suffer.

Arctic Refuge in the Crosshairs

By assuming speculative revenues from oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the President's budget shows itself to be out of touch with political and economic reality. In a cynical political move carried over from last year, the Administration's proposal would earmark some of the revenues from Arctic drilling for research into alternative, renewable sources of energy. Such cynical schemes don't negate the fact that the American people don't want drilling in the Arctic Refuge, and Congress has rejected it every year since 2001. No matter how you package it, drilling in the Arctic Refuge would ruin one of our last wild places for what the USGS estimates is less oil than the U.S. uses in six months, and it wouldn't get here for ten years or more.

Selling off our lands

The budget also proposes new authority allowing the Bureau of Land Management to significantly expand its authority to sell off public lands under its jurisdiction -- and to use the funds for infrastructure maintenance. This raises serious concerns about the potential privatization of our nation's public lands.