Conservation fund

It pays for parks, it costs taxpayers next to nothing, but somehow it’s in trouble.

Among the bounties of blessings we Texans can brag about are our wide open public spaces.

In West Texas, we can pitch a tent in the Guadalupe Mountains National Park and sleep under a night sky so clear we can peer into the Milky Way. In South Texas, we can wander through the Lower Rio Grande National Wildlife Refuge and see exotic birds as colorful as tropical fish, from Altamira orioles to green jays. In southeast Texas, we can canoe around the Big Thicket National Preserve, paddling for days through dark green curtains of water tupelos and towering magnolia trees.

This land is our land. And all three of the aforementioned park spaces share something else in common. They’ve been preserved and protected for our generation and for future Texans by the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund.

The LWCF helps buy and maintain public lands throughout the nation, from national parks to wildlife refuges to sacred battlefields. And it does almost all of its job without taking any money from taxpayers. But this federal initiative that’s traditionally enjoyed bipartisan support in Washington is in danger of losing its funding authorization because of a logjam on Capitol Hill. Congress needs to quit bickering and reauthorize the nation’s most important mechanism for conserving and acquiring public lands.

The money for this fund comes almost entirely from offshore drilling lease payments, the checks corporations write to the federal government for the privilege of extracting oil and gas from the Outer Continental Shelf. The idea is pretty simple: Take part of the revenue generated by the depletion of one natural resource owned by the public — offshore oil and gas — and spend it conserving and maintaining publicly owned resource. The LWCF Act authorizes the fund at $900 million a year, but Congress has historically diverted a lot of the money to other purposes.

Here in Texas, the LWCF has provided our state with about $577 million to fund hundreds of projects in federal, state and local parks. Among its beneficiaries in our area are the Sam Houston National Forest and the Anahuac and Aransas National Wildlife Reserves. Among the appropriations in the pipeline for this fiscal year are $1.5 million for the Lower Rio Grande National Wildlife Reserve, a spectacular bird-watching mecca that attracts tourists from across the nation.

The LWCF enjoys widespread, bipartisan support in Washington, but somehow it’s become a political football. The fund’s authorization runs out at the end of next month, and despite the LWCF’s popularity it has become entangled in a broader Capitol Hill battle over billions of unspent dollars in the federal budget. A comparatively small number of Republicans have raised objections to the LWCF, arguing the government shouldn’t spend any more money buying private land when it already has more park property than it can afford to maintain. But the critics mostly object to the way the money is being spent, not to the fund itself. Only a minority wants the LWCF killed.

In politics, even a great idea can’t survive without leadership willing to stand up for it. That’s what the legendary Texas state Sen. A.R. “Babe” Schwartz, who died last week at age 92, did to protect public access to Texas beaches. And that’s what we need leaders in Congress to do to maintain protections for federal lands.

At the dawn of the last century, Theodore Roosevelt earned his place in the pantheon of great American presidents with his commitment to conservation. The environmentalist president established 150 national forests, 51 federal bird preserves, 18 national monuments and set the stage for the creation of the National Park System. Speaking on the rim of the Grand Canyon, he implored his fellow Americans to preserve “this great wonder of nature” for their grandchildren.

“Leave it as it is,” Roosevelt said. “You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.”

Today, our elected representatives in Congress need to ask themselves a question: What would T.R. do?

The answer is easy. Congress should permanently reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Precious natural spaces, waterways and habitats that took millions of years to form should never be left to the mercy of fickle political winds.

In politics, even a great idea can’t survive without leadership willing to stand up for it. That’s what the legendary Texas state Sen. A.R. “Babe” Schwartz, who died last week at age 92, did to protect public access to Texas beaches.