Position on FY16 Omnibus Appropriations Bill

When crafting the FY16 omnibus, we respectfully urge Congress to reach out to party’s leadership and relevant appropriators to ask them to: 1) avoid anti-environmental policy riders, 2) increase funding for national parks from FY15, 3) reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), and 4) provide a clean policy fix for catastrophic wildfire funding, unburdened by management prescriptions.

Riders: We are alarmed at the potential for policy riders that could damage America’s national parks; the water, air, and wildlife that are critical to their health and the visitor experience. We urge you to keep the omnibus clean of environmentally-damaging policy riders that could undermine the National Park System and only threaten a government shutdown that would be devastating for visitors and local economies that depend on parks.

This past year witnessed dozens of riders in appropriations and other bills that would undermine National Park System units and their ecosystems. These damaging riders include undermining the president’s ability to designate national monuments, threatening mountain streams by eviscerating the stream protection rule and definition of fill material, preventing regulations on clean air and water, threatening gray wolves, threatening park units with oil and gas leasing on adjacent lands, altering LWCF, and more. We urge you to keep these and other damaging riders under consideration out of a final omnibus package.

National Park Funding: We also urge improved funding for the National Park Service on the cusp of its 2016 Centennial. Every state in our nation hosts incredible national parks and sites to be celebrated in the year ahead. American families are already starting to flock to national parks, through a successful Find Your Park campaign and the growing program to get kids into parks. This year presents an incredible opportunity to celebrate America’s best idea. Congress can do more for its constituents to ensure these sites are inviting; we are calling on you to ensure a more substantial investment in the National Park Service to guarantee a successful transition into its second century.

The recent decline in park funding has affected the entire system: poorly funded operations has resulted in fewer rangers, insufficient construction budgets have led to a larger deferred maintenance backlog, and an increasing backlog of land acquisition projects threatens development in national parks. We urge you to increase FY16 levels for the National Park Service to, at a minimum, the levels in the President’s Budget, which would return rangers to parks, invest in safe infrastructure, boost a matching grants program –Centennial Challenge–that enjoys bipartisan support, and support more than twenty needed land acquisition projects, among other benefits.

LWCF: The near universal recognition of LWCF as one of our nation’s most successful conservation programs is one of many reasons why the omnibus should provide a clean reauthorization of LWCF. Every county in the nation has benefitted from the fund, and we can no longer leave this critical federal program for preserving national parks in jeopardy.

Wildfire funding: Finally, we view the omnibus bill as an opportunity to improve the wildfire funding problem by including language similar to the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act, language that is not complicated by controversial provisions regarding forest management.

Next year is the 100th anniversary of the National Park System, which will bring more visitors to parks. It would be a shame if those visitors arrived to fewer rangers, shabby facilities, impaired air and water resources, and threatened wildlife.