THE ART OF THE (LAND) DEAL
Sweeping conservation package adds 4 new national monuments
U.S. Senate easily passes bill to expand parks and wilderness areas, including in New Mexico.
WASHINGTON — The Senate Tuesday passed the most sweeping conservation legislation in a decade, protecting millions of acres of land and hundreds of miles of wild rivers across the country and establishing four new national monuments honoring heroes from Civil War soldiers to a civil rights icon.
The 662-page measure, which passed 92 to 8, represented an old-fashioned approach to dealmaking that has largely disappeared on Capitol Hill. Senators from across the ideological spectrum celebrated home-state gains and congratulated each other for bridging the partisan divide.
“It touches every state, features the input of a wide coalition of our colleagues, and has earned the support of a broad, diverse coalition of many advocates for public lands, economic development, and conservation,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on the Interior, Environ-
ment and Related Agencies, and Sen. Martin Heinrich, a member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, successfully championed the provision to permanently reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
“I am immensely gratified to see this vital bill become law,” Udall said in a statement. “(It) has been particularly vital for New Mexico, where it has invested over $312 million to help protect our most cherished public lands, spur job creation and fuel our $9.9 billion outdoor recreation economy, a key economic driver in the state that employs 99,000 New Mexicans.
The legislation is a paradoxical win for conservation at a time when President Donald Trump has promoted development on public lands and scaled back safeguards established by his predecessors.
The bill, which the Congressional Budget Office projects will save taxpayers $9 million, enjoys broad support in the House. The lower chamber is poised to take it up after the mid-February recess, and White House officials have indicated privately that the president will sign it.
The measure protects 1.3 million acres as wilderness, the nation’s most stringent protection that prohibits even roads and motorized vehicles. It permanently withdraws more than 370,000 acres of land from mining around two national parks, including Yellowstone, and permanently authorizes a program to spend offshore drilling revenue on conservation efforts.
Heinrich lauded the fact that it will create 273,000 acres of wilderness in New Mexico, most of it within the boundaries of two national monuments Trump threatened to shrink. In an interview, he noted that Republican and Democratic supporters stuck together to defeat hostile amendments.
“That’s been much more rare in recent years,” he said.
Authorization for the popular program, the Land and Water Conservation Fund, lapsed months ago due to the partial government shutdown and other disputes. Liberals like the fact that the money allows agencies to set aside land for wildlife habitat. Conservatives like the fact that taxpayers don’t have to foot the bill for it.