The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) Coalition today denounced a new Department of the Interior Secretarial Order (3442) that significantly damages the bipartisan promise of the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA) — exactly one month after the Administration celebrated GAOA’s fifth anniversary.
“This Order will jeopardize some of the very investments that made GAOA historic—LWCF projects that expand recreational access to public lands including sportsmen’s access, that conserve wildlife habitat, and that invest in local communities across the country,” said Amy Lindholm, Director of Federal Affairs, Conservation Funding at the Appalachian Mountain Club and a spokesperson for the LWCF Coalition. “Fortunately, the Order does not include one of the administration’s worst ideas, leaving out its prior proposal to divert LWCF funding for unauthorized purposes. We are grateful to LWCF’s bipartisan Congressional champions for forcefully rejecting that out-of-touch proposal and continuing to defend LWCF, our public lands, and the many communities that depend on these funds in every corner of the country.
Lindholm continued, “Unfortunately, Secretarial Order 3442 still does real damage. It hinders critical conservation and public access by reviving previously rejected ideas, severely restricting Bureau of Land Management’s protection priorities for sportsmen and other outdoor recreationists, hamstringing LWCF land conservation tools, limiting private property owners’ rights to sell their land, and imposing new procedural roadblocks that will delay or derail urgently needed outdoor access and recreation projects. It’s not just a policy mistake—it’s a betrayal of the values that GAOA represents.
“These moves are a solution in search of a problem, and they will cause the public to lose access to beloved places forever. LWCF has worked successfully for 60 years without spending a dime of taxpayers’ money, which is why GAOA continues to have overwhelming bipartisan support throughout the country.”
The Order also contains a provision that could facilitate ongoing efforts to take federal public lands out of public hands. It reverses existing policies prohibiting states from using their LWCF grant funds to purchase currently protected federal conservation lands. With the continued threat of public land disposals, that change could help create a dangerous practical pathway for federal land sales by placing the burden on states to essentially buy them back.
LWCF has supported tens of thousands of conservation and recreation projects without using taxpayer dollars. By law, it is funded through a portion of offshore energy revenues—ensuring that development is balanced by investments in our land, water, and outdoor recreation access.
“Congress did its job back in 2020. So did President Trump. They passed -- and he signed -- a bill with overwhelming bipartisan support to permanently guarantee LWCF funding of at least $900 million annually, to give communities the tools they need to protect the places that matter most to their way of life and their local economy,” said Lindholm. “This Secretarial Order flies in the face of that success and puts the President’s conservation legacy at risk. If the administration truly wants to honor Teddy Roosevelt’s conservation ethic, we urge DOI to reverse these anti-public lands policy changes as soon as possible.”