Congress Debates Major Investments in the Outdoors
Hikers overlooking Yosemite Valley. Photo credit: Nina Luong. Southern Sierra Miwuk land.
In the next few weeks, Congress will decide on some generational investments in the outdoors. It’s hard to overstate what a big deal this could be for public lands and waters.
Before the end of October, Congress will decide whether—and how much—it will invest in public lands and waters, equitable access, climate resilience, and wildfire mitigation through the Build Back Better plan.
As you might remember, the draft versions of this plan contained a raft of investments in infrastructure, from childcare to bridges to community college. It also includes significant investments in public lands, everything from a climate corps to urban park funding to wildfire mitigation. These investments have interlocking benefits for outdoor recreation and for climate. Investments in outdoor recreation and public lands hold some of the solutions for the climate crisis, including things like mitigating the damages of wildfire, which affect our experiences outdoors, the safety of communities, and the ability of land management agencies to do much other than fight fire.
As Congress debates the future of this package, it’s critical that all of us who care about the outdoors—even if we’ve already sent letters or made phone calls already—take a few minutes today to ask our elected officials to prioritize these investments.
There are many provisions of the package we are stoked about, investments that would have a real, appreciable difference in your outdoor experiences in the coming years. They include:
Civilian Conservation Corps. The modern CCC will integrate climate change, conservation, equitable and sustainable recreation access, good jobs for Americans, and local economic development.
Conserving threatened landscapes. The bill protects landscapes directly threatened by resource extraction, including Oak Flat, the Grand Canyon, Thompson Divide, Chaco Canyon, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Modernizing fossil fuel development and hardrock mining on public lands and waters. Recent incidents, like the oil spill off the coast of southern California, demonstrate the urgent need to reform oil and gas leasing. These activities have a high risk of pollution, spills, or damages to local recreation resources, and are costly to taxpayers. Hardrock mining is also overdue for updates, given its damaging effects on public lands and outdoor recreation resources.
NEPA. We’ve talked about NEPA many times before, but it’s a cornerstone law that studies the environmental impact of changes to public land management, and one of its key benefits is that it ensures that the public has a chance to weigh in on how lands and waters are cared for. It can also be a slow and onerous process, and agencies need resources to expeditiously pursue analyses.
Urban parks and access to public lands. Several provisions create new funding for urban parks and green spaces, ensuring more young people have the opportunity to connect with public lands, and offer grants to expand equitable access to the outdoors.
Climate resilience and wildfire funding. Key provisions will help mitigate the effects of climate change (fire, flooding, erosion, and more) on public lands and waters.
You can read more about the other provisions that will benefit outdoor recreation and public lands in our letter to Congressional leadership here.
Click to open and read the full letter to Congressional leadership
Outdoor Alliance and its member groups are working hard to communicate our priorities with members of Congress and to share the key pieces of the Build Back Better plan that we hope are funded in the final version of the bill.
Given the breadth of the plan, many very good ideas may be on the chopping block, and it’s up to us now to reach out to our elected officials—remember that we put them in office and they care what we think—and ask them to make investments in the outdoors, public lands and waters, and climate resilience a priority.
You can take action below, it only takes a moment: