Congress, keep our national parks national: Column Protect the trickle of funds that lets future generations enjoy the great outdoors.

Jamie Williams | USA TODAY

Even as we prepare to send the kids back to school, we can still enjoy the luxury of long daylight hours in the great outdoors. Some of us have taken summer walks along an urban greenway in Dallas or honored our past at Valley Forge National Historical Park. Others packed up coolers, camping gear and children for a road trip to Olympic or Acadia National Parks. For my part, I enjoyed many a weekend hike along the C&O Canal near my home in Washington, D.C.

In addition to each one of these examples, there are more than 40,000 other places across the United States that have benefited from the Land and Water Conservation Fund. For 50 years now, this national program has preserved our country’s priceless natural beauty and resources, connecting millions of Americans with the parks and public lands that define and inspire us.

Yet this enduring program will be gutted unless Congress takes action to reauthorize it before Sept. 30. If we lose the Land and Water Conservation Fund, we rob America’s future generations of the chance to be stronger, healthier and happier by enjoying natural spaces. But what’s more, we unduly expose our national heritage to unacceptable development, such as private resorts in national parks and the destruction of hallowed battlefields to make way for strip malls and roadways.

This program has funded the protection of historic places like the Lewis and Clark Trail, battlefields and memorial sites, and some of America’s most iconic parkland like the Grand Canyon from irresponsible development inside and surrounding their boundaries. Enabling the government to conserve land for public use keeps development at an appropriate distance.

The fund has also helped to create thousands of local parks and places for outdoor recreation like hiking, hunting and camping in virtually every county in the nation. Whether you enjoy rambling up a mountain trail or simply taking your children to let off steam at a local playground, chances are good that the Land and Water Conservation Fund has richly expanded your opportunities to enjoy the great outdoors. Many of our most treasured lands and waters have been preserved over the years only because of forward-looking citizens and policy-makers who realized that a growing nation needs places for recreation, renewal and resource protection.

Congress needs to save the Land and Water Conservation Fund from extinction before it expires at the end of September. This remarkable program is funded with a slim portion of the royalties from offshore drilling in public waters. It trades one type of resource owned by the American public — oil and gas — for another — lands and waters that generations will enjoy for years to come.

Yet, some in Congress have made it abundantly clear that they intend to “reduce the Federal estate,” meaning the public lands we jointly own as Americans. Currently several bills are pending in the House, including measures from Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, and Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, that intend to facilitate the transfer of certain public lands to the states, which can then allow those lands to be disposed of in whatever way the states choose, including leasing or selling the land for drilling, mining and logging to maximize revenues. House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop, R-Utah, launched a Federal Land Action Group this spring with the “goal of introducing transfer legislation.” Should that transfer idea become law, some of our national forests, monuments, wilderness areas and other outdoor places could belong solely to corporate special interests; we may no longer be able to access them for a spontaneous weekend camping trip or a walk with the dog.

Many of our shared public lands bring countless restorative benefits not only to nature and wildlife, but to people — providing clean air and water, reconnecting children with the magic of the outdoors and creating jobs through America’s burgeoning $646 billion recreation economy. Republicans and Democrats alike agreed with that premise and proved it in 1990 when this funding for land conservation was last reauthorized — overwhelmingly.

Without the Land and Water Conservation Fund, our great outdoors will be threatened by poorly planned growth and development because local communities and the federal government will lose funds that could be used to preserve park land forever. Tomorrow’s children will grow up with fewer open green spaces and their American heritage will be buried beneath strip malls and condos.

There is still time for Congress to act and preserve this shared legacy. After you visit a favorite forest, bike trail, ball field or path along the beach this summer, I urge you to call your members of Congress and tell them to fully fund and reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

Jamie Williams is president of The Wilderness Society.

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