FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 20, 2018

(BILLINGS) – Last night, Congress failed to reauthorize and fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), one of America’s best conservation programs. Montanans were counting on Senator Steve Daines who sits on both the authorizing and funding committees of the Senate to secure both reauthorization and funding.

“Senator Daines claims to support Montana’s public lands but failed to do so in Congress yesterday,” said Rick Potts, Interim Director of the Montana Conservation Voters Education Fund. “ Montanans expected our Senator, whose party controls Congress, to convince his colleagues to stand up and fight for a program that’s essential to our outdoor way of life.”

Since Congress let LWCF expire on October 1, 2018, the program has lost nearly $200 million in funding for our parks and recreation and today’s failure to secure full-funding could cost our parks and recreation another $900 million next year. Senator Daines is not only part of the majority party in U.S. Senate but he is also a committee member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, with authority to reauthorize LWCF, and a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee with the authority to fund the program.

First established by Congress in 1965, LWCF is funded by offshore oil and gas royalties rather than taxpayer dollars, providing hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to protect open space, historic sites and increase access for outdoor recreation. Through this program, nearly $600 million has been invested in the Big Sky State, which is critical to supporting Montana’s outdoor recreation economy that generates 71,000 jobs and over $7 billion in consumer spending.

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Montana Conservation Voters Education Fund (MCVEF) is a non-profit, non-partisan organization whose mission is to educate citizens and organizations in the basic techniques of effective civic engagement to further environmental and conservation goals. MCVEF programs educate the public about critical environmental and public lands issues; promote greater non-partisan citizen involvement in the democratic process; and provide strategic tools to conservation organizations to be more effective.

CONTACT
Whitney Tawney
Montana Conservation Voters Education Fund
whitney@mtvoters.org, (406) 254-1593