Last week, Congressional leadership cobbled together a bi-partisan omnibus appropriations bill that was cheered by environmental and sports groups.
Since the 1960's, taxes on oil drilling were put into the Land and Water Conservation Fund, designed to protect wildlife habitat and support community projects. The fund doesn't use taxpayer dollars, set at $900 million dollars.
While only rarely fully funded, it still supplied key dollars to preserve the environment and do outdoor projects. The funding ran out in September with another appropriations bill. Many projects in Wisconsin and several in the Northwoods received funding from the federal fund.
One of the key lobbys to restore funding was the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership based in Washington, D.C. The Partnership's President and CEO is Whit Fosburgh.
He says they got funding restored in the short term...
"....it's been authorized for three years. We got more money in it, we got $450 million into the program as opposed to $300 million we had for the last few years...."
One of the key provisions was permanent authorization for an incentive to create conservation easements on private lands. A negative, says Fosburgh, was no fix was established to give extra money to the U.S. Forest Service to do routine maintenance on national public lands.
