Feds protect Highlands, Housatonic in $1.7T omnibus spending bill
The Highlands and the Housatonic are on the omnibus. But biodiversity got thrown under the bus.
That’s the score from the nearly $1.7 trillion federal spending bill passed by Congress in December.
The bill included reauthorization of the Highlands Conservation Act. In that, Congress approved $10 million a year for the next six years to protect land in the 3.5-million-acre swath of the Highlands-Appalachian Mountains running through Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and northwestern Connecticut.
It also designated the 41-mile stretch of the Housatonic River from the Massachusetts-Connecticut border to Boardmans Bridge in New Milford as a Wild and Scenic River. The status offers the river and its towns new ways to manage recreational and development use along the Housatonic.
But Senate leaders decided at the last minute to drop the Renewing America’s Wildlife Act, which was considered the most important bill to protect the nation’s biodiversity in a generation.
“If we had got that, we would have scored the trifecta,’’ said Tim Abbott, regional conservation and Greenprint director for the Housatonic Valley Association, a Cornwall-based environmental advocacy group.
Let’s examine the good news first.
The renewed funding will allow the four states to continue to protect vital open space in the Highlands corridor.
Lynn Werner, the HVA’s executive director, said it supports the association’s Follow the Forest Initiative, which wants to create a grand wildlife corridor from the Hudson River Valley through Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to Canada.
The reauthorizations will also allow new towns to be added to the Highlands’ area, Abbott said.
Currently, the Connecticut towns included in the Highlands region lie north of Cameron’s Line, a geological fault running from the Danbury area diagonally north to the northeastern edge of Litchfield County.
It excludes many towns that share the same basic landscapes.
“Morris is in, Bethlehem is out,’’ Abbott said.
The new reauthorization may allow towns to the south and east of the line to be folded into the Highlands, he said.
Second good news: The designation adding the Housatonic River to the federal Wild and Scenic Rivers program has been in the works, on and off, for more than 40 years.
Bill Tingley of Sharon, chairman of the seven-town Housatonic River Commission, said he helped guide federal staff down the river in 1978 when they were writing their initial reports
Currently, the Connecticut towns included in the Highlands region lie north of Cameron’s Line, a geological fault running from the Danbury area diagonally north to the northeastern edge of Litchfield County.
on its eligibility for the Wild and Scenic Rivers program.
Interest in the designation has waxed and waned since then, Werner said. She credits the Housatonic River Commission for reviving interest in the designation and winning approval for it in all seven towns along the corridor.
The designation will allow the towns to implement a management plan that can enhance the Housatonic’s environmental quality and its recreational opportunities, Tingley said. It will also give the towns more say in any work that federal agencies propose along the river corridor.
The plan is needed more than ever because the COVID-19 pandemic pushed residents to paddle and fish on the Housatonic, sometimes straining the towns’ ability to control the additional recreation, Werner said.
“Some access points had to be shut down,’’ she said.
Credit for winning the designation should go to all the partners involved in the work, Tingley said. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-5, played vital parts in shepherding the bill through Congress, he said.
“It’s pretty special having a Wild and Scenic River and the Appalachian Trail going right through our neighborhood,’’ he said.
Now the bad news: The Senate’s decision to drop the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act from the final spending package means there won’t be needed federal money to study and protect
a wide range of wildlife – birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians alike.
Robert LaFrance, policy director for Audubon Connecticut, said the act was doomed by the Senate’s unwillingness to either pay for it through the government’s general revenue accounts or to agree on a new source of funding.
The final attempt to find new funding – by closing a tax loophole that favored bitcoin transactions – fell apart when some senators got cold feet.
“The debate became over bitcoins, not wildlife,’’ LaFrance said.
Audubon Connecticut and other conservation groups may turn their attention to getting the Connecticut General Assembly to increase funding for wildlife protection on its own, LaFrance said.
The work on biodiversity funding will get done, Werner said.
“It takes persistence,’’ she said. “Persistence and partnerships.’’