Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is among those working to create a conservation plan for the 21st century that would preserve and protect more of the nation’s undeveloped lands.
It’s likely to bear a resemblance to the Colorado model that has emerged from Great Outdoors Colorado, a conservation program funded by lottery dollars that Salazar helped create two decades ago. We’re intrigued by the idea of taking Colorado’s ideas national and favor conservation efforts generally, but we do have reservations about where the money will come from since the government needs to be looking for ways to reduce spending.
Salazar, who was in town on a Great Outdoors listening tour that included stops in Golden and Grand Junction, told us there is a number of revenue streams that could be redirected. And he said if Congress were to fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund, that would help a great deal.
Created in 1964, the fund was the product of a bargain struck between conservation interests and those who favored resource extraction from federal properties. The idea was that a portion of royalties from federal drilling leases would go into the fund, which would pay for acquisition of new recreational lands.
Even though Congress has authority to appropriate up to $900 million annually from the fund for land purchases, it has done so only once, instead diverting the money to other purposes.
Salazar called the situation a “broken promise.”
We agree with that assessment, but we’re also deeply troubled by the nation’s burgeoning debt. Congress should find budget reductions elsewhere to allow the conservation fund to operate as envisioned.
If there is a way to solve the money problem, it is easy, we think, to get behind the broad ideas embodied in the Great Outdoors initiative.
Those include getting kids and grown-ups connected to the nation’s places of natural beauty, whether they are local parks, ranches, wild areas or beaches. President Obama is behind the effort, having launched the initiative in April.
“Despite our conservation efforts, too many of our fields are becoming fragmented, too many of our rivers and streams are becoming polluted, and we are losing our connection to the parks, wild places and open spaces we grew up with and cherish,” the president said.
The listening tour that is being conducted by Salazar and others in the administration will culminate in a report that is to be sent to Obama in mid-November. At that point, perhaps we will get a better sense of the shape of the new initiative, and the all-important issue of funding.
Colorado is a special place in large measure because of the preservation of its natural beauty. It’s important to engage the next generation of Coloradans, and Americans, and introduce them to our great outdoors since they are the future stewards of the land and are future taxpayers.
We would be happy to see the ideas and programs that drive conservation here go national, but there must be a viable way to pay for it.
