By Adam Gebauer
Even though it is winter, there is a lot happening in and around our public lands. There is a lot of excitement among public land managers around two recent pieces of legislation and the much-needed funds that will be allocated: The Great American Outdoors act – signed into law by President Trump; and the Bipartisan Infrastructure and Jobs Act – recently signed by President Biden.
The Great American Outdoors Act has two pieces that will enhance and increase our public lands. This act will provide $9.5 billion over five years to pay for the maintenance backlog in our National Parks and Forest Service Systems. It will also fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund to $900 million a year. This fund uses fees and royalties from offshore oil and gas extraction for federal, state, and local governments to acquire or place easements on land for the benefit of all Americans.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure and Jobs Act will provide $1.2 trillion in infrastructure spending over five years and within that is over $5.6 billion for green infrastructure, think forests. As we have seen this past summer, wildfire smoke is now on the minds of Americans across the country and this act provides $3.4 billion for wildlife risk reduction. This includes funding for forest thinning, prescribed burns, fuel breaks, increases to wildland firefighter pay, as well as bolstering prediction, modeling, and forecasting of wildfires and drought.
The infrastructure act also provides $2.1 billion for ecosystem restoration with a large portion of that going to the REPLANT Act (Repair Existing Public Lands by Adding Necessary Trees). Currently, the National Forest System is allocated $30 million per year to plant trees which has been in place since 1980. With climate change and increased catastrophic wildfires, the Forest Service projects that they would need $183 million per year for 10 years to cover the backlog of reforestation needs. The REPLANT Act calls for the planting of 1.2 billion trees over the next 20 years and will provide over 49,000 jobs.
Although many of the climate change initiatives were stripped out of the infrastructure bill to get it through Congress, this is much needed funding for our public lands. It is now our collective job to make sure that these funds are spent in ways that are ecologically sound and beneficial to communities both near and far from these public lands.