Environews, Regulars and Shorts

Environews: Land and Water Conservation Fund “reform” a bad idea

By Amy Brunvand

As Chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources, Congressman Rob Bishop (R-UT-1) continued his attack on the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), a 50-year-old program that dedicates royalties from offshore oil and gas production to purchase new public lands for recreation and wildlife.

-by Amy Brunvand

LWCFBishop derided people like me (and probably you) who participate in federal lands recreation as “powerful special interest groups… who are willing to lie and cheat to lock in permanently a system that lacks transparency and swindles states’ recreational needs.”

Claiming that LWCF is in need of reform, Bishop introduced a bill with the misleading name “Protecting America’s Recreation and Conservation (PARC) Act.” If passed into law, the PARC Act would actually take federal money away from parks and recreation and hand it over as a subsidy for offshore fossil fuel development.

More December Environews:

In memorium Susan Tixier, a truly Great Old Broad

Tribes support Bears Ears; Gov. Herbert waffles

Clean energy future for Utah?

UTA receives Green Business Awards

Oil refinery to pay fines

This article was originally published on December 3, 2015.