Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, let me thank my colleague from Montana. I think one of the great things about New Mexico and Montana is that we are both from States that absolutely cherish the outdoors, and we have a lot of constituents who care about the activities that generate so much income from the outdoors.

Obviously, I hear from an enormous number of my constituents asking us to reauthorize and permanently authorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund--to fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund. In fact, recently there was a letter which was sent to me but was also sent to the chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee--to the chair and to the ranking member, the good Senator from Washington. It was signed by dozens of businesses saying: Hey, this is important to our bottom line. Please extend the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Please continue to support this bipartisan legacy of standing up for our natural resources in this country.

My good friend from Montana mentioned the scale of what that means in his State, and it is not a dissimilar story in New Mexico. In fact, over $6 billion annually comes from outdoor recreation activities, and 68,000 jobs in our State are directly related to outdoor recreation.

In fact, when I go home this weekend, we are going to be celebrating the Valles Caldera National Preserve and its management by the National Park Service. That was a property that for decades my constituents could not access. They could not hunt; they could not fish. It was private property. It was because of the Land and Water Conservation Fund that this place, which had really been on the radar screen of the National Park Service since the early part of the last century--probably since the 1930s--could come into public ownership and now be one of the true gems in the entire Nation of our public lands.

We are going to be celebrating that with our constituents on Saturday. The Secretary of Interior is coming. There are literally 100,000 acres of some of the most spectacular high-elevation grasslands and conifer forests and trout streams and elk habitat that we have ever seen, and there are businesses that rely on that. Tourism is an enormous part of our economy in New Mexico. So this is something which has been absolutely crucial to our State's economy, especially in the midst of the last decade and the challenges we have had economically. I know one of the groups who will be there on Saturday are the sportsmen, who care about utilizing the outdoors.

I would ask my colleague from Montana if in Montana he hears from people who hunt and fish, as I do in New Mexico, about the importance this particular legislation has had in protecting habitat and protecting access to the places that regular, blue-collar folks can go to hunt and fish.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. HEINRICH. I would ask my colleague from Montana--we have heard a lot about reform. When we had the hearing in front of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, we heard people on both sides of the aisle talking about how well this program works.

Does the Senator think the opposition that is holding this up, that is holding back the majority of this body--a bipartisan majority, I would add--does the Senator from Montana think that reform is really what this is about or is it about a more basic, more ideological opposition to public lands and the current efforts to either sell off or transfer those public lands that our constituents rely on for access to go camping, to go hunting, to go rock climbing, to recreate, to spend time with their families?

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. HEINRICH. Ironically, the money in the Land and Water Conservation Fund is not tax dollars. It is literally a deal that goes back five decades now where we opened up large swaths of our natural resources, our oil and gas offshore, and took a percentage of that and invested it back into protecting our natural resources. Obviously, those are natural resources that are one-time. You only get to drill for oil and produce natural gas one time. So the idea was that we would invest that in something to protect our environment, to protect our conservation lands, and to make a permanent contribution to that level of conservation.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. HEINRICH. That is absolutely right. I hear from constituents all the time who will never be able to afford one of those $5 or $10,000 elk hunts on private land but who can enter the lottery every year and who do and oftentimes rely on that to get their family through the winter and to also just pull their family together in a tradition they have had as a part of who they are for years and years.

On Saturday, when we go to celebrate the Valles Caldera National Preserve, I am going to be taking my fly rod, and I am looking forward to spending the dollars that will go back into our State's game and fish coffers to make sure that resource is there again and again and again. That is what this Land and Water Conservation Fund is all about.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source