The Government Owns Over 623 Million Acres. Why Does It Need More?
The Government Owns Over 623 Million Acres. Why Does It Need More?
Do you have enough? Insatiable – that would seem to be the
word that best describes the appetite of some in Congress and their
friends in the
environmental community.
Insatiable – that would seem to be the word that best
describes the appetite of some in Congress and their friends in the
environmental community.
Congress has added over 450 pages to the defense authorization bill
to designate wilderness, create new parks, designate Wild and Scenic
Rivers and fund National Heritage areas – things that have nothing to do
with national defense.
Yet for some, even this enormous helping of green pork is not enough.
Several members of the House of Representatives are pushing for far
more, seeking to gift the environmental community with a reauthorization
of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The LWCF was enacted in 1965
to take offshore energy development revenues and use them to buy private
land and turn it into public parks.
After five decades of funding, the LWCF will expire in 2015. When one
examines the scale and scope of federal lands and federal environmental
designations, it is clear there is no longer any need to have a
dedicated fund to feed the insatiable appetite of Washington.
Between the four largest landholding agencies (the Bureau of Land
Management, the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
and the National Parks Service) the federal government owns over 623
million acres. To put that in perspective, it is larger than France,
Spain, Germany, Poland, Italy, the United Kingdom, Austria, Switzerland
and the Netherlands combined. The National Park Service – the smallest
of the four major federal landholders – has in its portfolio:
$2,750,000,000 annual budget
84,000,000 acres of land
4,502,644 acres of oceans, lakes, reservoirs
85,049 miles of perennial rivers and streams
68,561 archeological sites
27,000 historic structures
2,461 national historic landmarks
582 national natural landmarks
401 national parks
49 national heritage areas
Unsurprisingly, the Department of Interior, under which the NPS
falls, has a huge maintenance backlog of between $13.5 billion and $20
billion for the land it already owns. In other words, NPS can’t manage
what it already has.
So the question is: Do we really need a permanent pot of money to
continually expand the federal footprint? If you are unsure as to the
answer, below is more information about the immense holdings of other
federal agencies. And, one should bear in mind that this does not
include nearly 200 million acres of state owned lands. More importantly,
this does not contemplate the federal environmental regulatory net cast
over tens of millions of acres of private lands through laws like the
Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act’s wetlands regulation.
The coalition promoting the LWCF states that “…the program has been
chronically underfunded leading to a number of missed opportunities for
investing in important areas. Now, a broad-based coalition of
conservation, recreation, environment, business, historic and cultural
organizations as well as many others are working together to secure full
and dedicated funding of the LWCF. At the congressionally authorized
level of $900 million annually…”
At time when we have $18 trillion in debt and 623 million acres
already under federal control, having a special $900 million annual fund
dedicated to purchasing yet more land is unnecessary.
We need less, not more, federal land. If there is any particular area
lawmakers decide must be set aside, Congress can appropriate money for
that purpose, just as it appropriates money for the military, veterans
and other concerns more important than growing the vast federal estate.
The Land and Water Conservation Fund is done. It is time to stick a fork in it.
US Fish and Wildlife Service
150 million acres of land and water
560 national wildlife refuges
38 wetland management districts
National Ocean Atmospheric Administration
170,000 square miles of marine and Great Lakes waters
13 national marine sanctuaries
1 marine national monument
US Forest Service
193,000,000 acres
154 national forests
20 grasslands encompassing
439 wilderness areas totaling over 36 million acres of land
20 national recreation areas
6 national scenic areas
6 national monument areas
2 national volcanic monument areas
2 national historic areas
Bureau of Land Management
245 million surface acres
700 million acres of sub-surface mineral estate
221 Wilderness Areas totaling 8.7 million acres
16 National Monuments comprising 4.8 million acres
What happened to limited government? We need to get back to the days
of limited government. It seems like the government is getting bigger
and bigger by the day.
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