Public lands, parks fund again faces termination

For the second time since it became law in 1964, the Land and Water Conservation Fund — introduced in Congress by Everett’s Sen. Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson to protect the nation’s natural resources, its cultural heritage and provide recreational opportunities for the people’s enjoyment — faces expiration.

“I would like to remind you that it is mostly to the open areas that 90 percent of all Americans go each year, seeking refreshment of body and spirit. These are the places they go to hunt, fish, camp, picnic, swim, for boating or driving for pleasure, or perhaps simply for relaxation or solitude,” Jackson said in August 1964, just before the Senate voted 92-1, to pass his bill.

For its first 50 years, the fund faced no threat of termination, regularly renewed by Congress with healthy bipartisan support. And in that time the fund — supported not with tax dollars but entirely through royalties paid by the oil and gas industry for offshore leases — has funded purchase and preservation of public land and water projects throughout the nation and development at national parks and matching grants for park projects at the state and local level, protecting more than 7 million acres and funding $16.8 billion in projects in all 50 states.

In Washington state alone, the fund has invested more than $675 million since its inception to expand and protect parks as large and as wild as Mount Rainier National Park to preserves closer to home like Bothell’s North Creek Forest, a 63-acre forestland that provides a green oasis to the residential neighborhoods that surround it.

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