Billions headed for national parks
After spending his presidency denying climate change, placing coal and oil industry officials in top environmental jobs, and weakening dozens of public health and wildlife rules, President Donald Trump on Tuesday reversed course and signed a historic law to pump billions of dollars into longneglected repairs and upgrades at America’s national parks.
The measure, known as the “Great American Outdoors Act,” is the most significant new federal conservation law in 40 years, since President Jimmy Carter doubled the size of the national park system by establishing 157 million acres of new parks, wildlife refuges, scenic rivers and other wilderness areas in Alaska during his final weeks in office in 1980.
“There hasn’t been anything like this since Teddy Roosevelt, I suspect,” Trump said during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House.
Environmentalists cheered, finally securing a win they have sought for more than 20 years.
“The Great American Outdoors Act is a truly historic, bipartisan conservation accomplishment that will protect wildlife habitat, expand recreational opportunities, restore public lands and waters, and create good jobs,” said Collin O’Mara, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation.
Election year pressures were at the center of the unusual breakthrough.
Several of the chief sponsors of the bill, including Cory Gardner of Colorado, Steve Daines of Montana, Martha McSally of Arizona and Susan Collins of Maine, are Republican senators in close re-election races. The
White House and GOP leaders, who previously have opposed increasing the funding, saw the measure as a major accomplishment that could help Republicans win those races. Gardner and Daines personally urged Trump to embrace it, and were featured at the signing ceremony Tuesday.
During the ceremony, the president twice mispronounced the name of Yosemite National Park, calling it “Yo-se-MIGHT,” sparking ridicule on social media.
The new law will provide $9.5 billion over the next five years to repair roads, restrooms, trails and campgrounds at America’s 419 national parks — from Yosemite to the Everglades — and at other public lands where facilities have fallen into disrepair after years of neglect and funding shortfalls.