Conservation Fund Essential To Our Heritage

By By Jere Krakow / Retired National Park Service Superintendent, National Trails System on Mon, May 30, 2011

Historic sites and trails define communities throughout the great state of New Mexico. They connect us to our natural and cultural heritage, provide recreational opportunities and strengthen the social fabric of our country.

That's why I recently traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with our New Mexico congressional delegation about the importance of protecting our public lands and historic trails.

By now, everyone recognizes that we must put the government's budget on a diet, and tough decisions have to be made. But investing in our state and national heritage and its economic recovery through a federal program that doesn't come out of our tax dollars is a smart choice as Congress develops a budget for the next fiscal year.

Since 1965, that program, called the Land and Water Conservation Fund, has preserved places like the El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, which in 1598 saw a slow procession of settlers, priests, soldiers and livestock led by Juan de Oñate move northward up the Rio Grande Valley on a 1,500-mile trek from Mexico City.

The conservation fund also has protected the Petroglyph National Monument, Santa Fe and Rio Grande Wild and Scenic Rivers, Old Spanish National Historic Trail and Taos Valley - and there continue to be other urgent conservation needs in New Mexico.

As a member of the national trails community and a retired National Park Service superintendent for the National Trails System, I have seen the important role this fund can play in protecting the fabric of our public lands and trails while drawing tourist dollars from residents and out-of-state visitors alike to our state.

In fact, the Outdoor Industry Association has found that active outdoor recreation contributes $3.8??billion annually to the state's economy, supports 47,000 jobs across New Mexico, generates $184??million in annual state tax revenue and produces nearly $2.75??billion annually in retail sales and services across the state!

What makes the Land and Water Conservation Fund such a bargain investment is that it isn't financed by our taxes.

Instead, the fund gets a portion of the fees collected from oil and gas companies when they lease federally managed areas in our offshore waters. Every year, $900??million of those fees, which can exceed $6??billion, is supposed to be put into this fund to protect our federal, state and local lands and waters.

However, that seldom happens.

Instead, Congress uses most of the oil and gas company fees for other purposes, and the Land and Water Conservation Fund is consistently shortchanged.

Today, the fund is in deep jeopardy. Congress slashed the program during year-end budget negotiations, which left the program with just a third of what it is supposed to get despite the hard work of our congressional delegation. Now the U.S. House of Representatives is proposing even deeper cuts that would decimate the program.

Congress hasn't yet made a final decision, and we still have the opportunity to save a program that has done and can continue to do so much for our state.

Gratefully, Senators Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall and Representatives Martin Heinrich and Ben Lujan have recognized this and have shown great leadership and unwavering commitment to the citizens of New Mexico by supporting the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

While there's no doubt that federal spending needs to be reduced, not all cuts are equal.

Wiping out the Land and Water Conservation Fund, as now proposed in the U.S. House of Representatives, is wrong-headed and will squander an opportunity to protect our state's and nation's treasured places.

The conservation fund is the kind of program that should be encouraged, not eliminated.

Jere Krakow, an Albuquerque resident, is a member of the Old Spanish Trail Association, Camino Real Trail Association and Santa Fe Trail Association. He is a retired National Park Service Superintendent for the National Trails System in the Intermountain Region.