America’s National Parks will be receiving some much-needed TLC in the coming years thanks to the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA), a bill that won approval in Congress last month with now-rare bipartisan support before being signed into law by President Donald Trump on Tuesday.
It’s “the biggest land conservation legislation in a generation,” according to Linda Bilmes, the author of “Valuing U.S. National Parks and Programs: America’s Best Investment” and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. “The number of visitors to the national parks system has increased by 50 percent since 1980, but the parks’ budget has remained effectively flat. This imbalance has led to a $12 billion backlog of maintenance to repair roads, trails, campgrounds, monuments, fire safety, utilities, and visitor infrastructure — which will finally be addressed.”
Specifically, the GAOA will provide $9.5 billion through the National Park and Public Lands Legacy Restoration Fund, which will address deferred maintenance at national parks, wildlife refuges, forests, and other federal lands, with much of it earmarked specifically to the 419 national park units in the United States. It will infuse some much-needed funds into the National Parks, National Forests, Fish and Wildlife, and Bureau of Land Management programs with grants also available to state and local governments for conservation efforts.
“We are proving that we can protect our treasured environment without bludgeoning our workers and crushing our businesses,” the president said in a ceremony on Tuesday. “When young Americans experience the breathtaking beauty of the Grand Canyon, when their eyes widen in amazement as Old Faithful bursts into the sky, when they gaze upon Yosemite’s towering sequoias, their love of country grows stronger, and they know that every American has a duty to preserve this wondrous inheritance.”
“This is a big win for conservation,” said Sen. Steve Daines, R-Montana. “It’s a big win for jobs. It’s a big win for our Montana way of life. It’s a big win for bipartisanship. And, perhaps it’s only fitting it took public lands to bring a divided government together.”
