From 7 founders
around a campfire to 30,000+ MEMBERS

Let’s go on a short adventure into one of America’s greatest success stories. We’ll start with something easy, like a short hike to the waterfalls in Ohio’s Cuyahoga Valley National Park or a 20 mile stroll on the park’s Towpath Trail through some of the most beautiful scenery – sandwiched in amongst some of America’s most urbanized landscapes – on earth. We’ll ponder Civil War history at Harper’s Ferry, in West Virginia, while walking through a forest that once was slated for full suburban sprawl and where development would have meant dumping 70,000 gallons of treated sewage into the Shenandoah River every day. Going further into the wild, we’ll hit the rivers and streams of Montana at any one of a hundred public fishing access sites, ride horses in the high country of Wyoming, or head down to Bayou Sauvage, the largest urban wildlife refuge in the world, a teeming space of nature, fishing and natural flood control in the heart of New Orleans.

There are about 40,000 places (and counting!) we can choose from, from humble but crucial ballfields in hardscrabble urban neighborhoods to high-altitude Western elk hunting and skiing on public lands. We’ll end the adventure, though, in the tiny town of Mullen, Nebraska (population 509), on a hot summer day in the Sandhills at the local swimming pool. At some point Americans figured out that to thrive and be healthy and strong in our country required having public places to learn to swim and to roam and enjoy our lands and waters, no matter whether you are wealthy or poor, whether you live in a booming city or the tiniest town on the Great Plains. We envisioned a society that was worthy of the dreams of our citizenry, and we went to work and built it.

How? Through the Land and Water Conservation Fund – or LWCF.

In 1964, Congress enacted bipartisan legislation to dedicate a portion of the royalties received by the federal government from offshore oil and gas development to conservation and wildlife habitat projects across the U.S. The concept remains simple: utilize revenues from the depletion of one resource offshore to enhance land and water resources onshore. It remains one of the most successful programs in the history of our nation and thanks to members of Congress who stepped up again in 2019, the program will endure permanently.

One of the initial goals of LWCF was to protect critical drinking water sources by buffering rivers and streams from development. It has done this extremely well. But since 1964, the fund also has been used to preserve wildlife habitat and open lands for recreation and to help create everything from hiking trails and skateboard parks to swimming pools and public campsites. Additionally, it’s become a powerful tool for consolidating inholdings, eliminating checkerboarded land ownership and creating important management efficiencies. The cumulative impact of all LWCF projects has helped fuel a powerful economic engine generating over $887 billion annually in outdoor recreation spending, creating the kind of communities that Americans want to live in, raise their families in, invest in and protect.

LWCF is also one of the least known or understood programs in our nation. The vast majority of citizens who benefit every day from LWCF has no idea that it exists. One consequence of our ignorance? Every year, Congress is emboldened to divert millions in LWCF monies to projects that have nothing to do with the goals of the fund. Some in Congress, their eyes on LWCF money and knowing that too many Americans are uninformed about what is at stake, want to get rid of LWCF altogether.

To ensure the future of this critical program, we need our leaders in Congress to step up once again and dedicate full funding to LWCF in perpetuity so that politically charged appropriations processes can never compromise LWCF projects again.

In the mountains just east of Missoula, Montana, in and around the Lolo National Forest, lie 6,140 acres of private lands owned by a timber company that has allowed public access for hunting, fishing and other recreation. The private lands are part of the “checkerboard” that dates back to the opening of the frontier, when the US government awarded sections- square miles, or 640 acres- to various private companies (such as the railroads) to log and develop, while keeping others in public ownership. Such a land ownership pattern exists still across the Western states, and it creates a near-impossible challenge for both healthy land management and public access- one gate on the private lands can block tens of thousands of acres of public land, in effect, privatizing it for those who have the key.

"The opportunities to restore the coldwater tributaries will be lost"

The 6,140 acres of private lands near Missoula- one of Montana’s fastest growing cities- are important for more than just recreation or hunting and fishing, although these are their primary uses. The headwaters of four extremely important Westslope cutthroat trout streams, all tributaries to the Clark Fork of the Columbia River that flows through Missoula, are found here. One of these streams, Harvey Creek, has both native cutthroats and endangered bull trout, and is a perfect candidate for restoration work that will reconnect it to the Clark Fork, and create a powerful and sustainable habitat for both species of fish, and enhance the health and fisheries of the Clark Fork itself.

These private lands also lie along the Interstate 90 corridor, between Beavertail Hill State Park and the Bearmouth rest area (the effort to acquire and conserve them is called the “B2B project”), and the timber company roads that cross them are currently the shortest way to access both huge blocks of US Forest Service public lands, and the community of Hall, Montana. The timber company working with wildlife biologists, closes many of these roads to protect elk and deer herds from excessive motorized hunting pressure during big game seasons.

As development increases in this area, these private timber lands could be sold off. Access to public lands and the community of Hall would be at the mercy of landowners who have no incentive to give it. The opportunities to restore the coldwater tributaries will be lost, as will the public big game hunting and other recreation and, potentially, the big game herds themselves as winter ranges are developed for cabin sites or houses, and hunting pressure increases. Should the Land and Water Conservation Fund not be reauthorized in 2018, or should its money be diverted or shorted, the B2B project will not be possible. A cascade of negative consequences would surely result.

If there is one single project in the Rocky Mountain West that fits every possible goal of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, it must be the acquisition of lands that guarantee access to and consolidate the management and protection of the Tenderfoot Creek drainage in the Little Belt Mountains of central Montana.

Tenderfoot Creek is a broad torrent of crystal clear cold water born of a wide arterial system of high mountain streams, falling 3250 feet in elevation from its snowmelt headwaters to lush open grasslands and shadowed forests of pine and fir. It is the perfect home for the elsewhere- imperiled and shockingly beautiful Westslope Cutthroat trout, and it is one of the primary spawning tributaries for rainbow and brown trout in Montana’s famous Smith River, which is one of Montana’s most coveted and iconic recreational float and fishing trips (it is a Blue Ribbon trout fishery so popular that it is the only Montana river that requires a permit to float and camp). The Smith also provides crucial irrigation water to farms and ranches in it slower reaches. Tenderfoot Creek and the Smith River are linchpins of central Montana’s recreational and agricultural economies.

The entire Tenderfoot watershed is also home to black bear, moose, elk, wolves and other wildlife, and is extremely popular with both hikers and explorers and hunters and fishermen.

Although most of the Tenderfoot was protected on public lands in the Lewis and Clark National Forest, 8220 acres around and within it were in private ownership, and subject to sale and development, or increased logging, all of which would have meant roadbuilding and erosion and sedimentation in what was one of the most ecologically diverse and intact watersheds in Montana. Deer and elk would lose crucial low elevation winter range to development. Management of public lands would become impossible. Even more troublesome, the private landholdings also blocked public access - a single gate on private land could, and did, block off thousands of acres of National Forest, with some of the best public fishing and hunting in Montana suddenly off-limits.

With $10.1 million from the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and other conservation groups acquired the most critical private holdings and transferred them to the Lewis and Clark National Forest, ensuring both long term protection of the watershed and public access for hunting, fishing, hiking and camping.

“From fishing access sites, to trails, to playgrounds, to smart investments like the Tenderfoot, LWCF is a win-win for Montana. The Tenderfoot is an exceptional example of how Montanans can work together to protect our public lands for future generations,” said Montana’s Gov. Steve Bullock, of the effort.

The John Day River is born of the snows in the high Blue Mountains in northeastern Oregon, and flows northwest to the Columbia River through some of America’s most isolated and intact sagebrush steppe landscapes. The John Day, named after a fur trapper and trader who was robbed, stripped naked and released by Native Americans at the river’s mouth in 1812, is an envelope of pure clear water in one of the most arid parts of the inland northwest, a lifegiving artery replete with native steelhead, a spring run of wild Chinook salmon, bull trout, Columbia redband trout, smallmouth bass, and a host of lesser known or sought native species. The rugged wildlands and canyons of the river- it is deeply incised into the Columbia Plateau- are home to Oregon’s largest population of bighorn sheep, thriving herds of elk and mule deer, and to rare ferruginous hawks, as well as the tiny grasshopper sparrow, or the sagebrush lizard, unsung species holding out here, in the back of beyond.

The John Day, 281 miles long from headwaters to the Columbia, is Oregon’s longest undammed river, and is a crucial source for irrigation for farmers downstream. It offers some of America’s most deservedly popular float trips on its 70 miles of designated Wild and Scenic River and is the center for every kind of outdoor recreation from hunting and fishing to horseback trips, epic hikes and mountain biking. The lower canyons, towering columns of mahogany-colored basalt, are some of the most spectacular in the West. But until very recently, the only way to access them, and to access over 78,000 acres of public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management, was to take a boat downriver on an extended float trip. Using Land and Water Conservation Fund dollars, the Western Rivers Conservancy was able to purchase the Rattray Ranch, which has a paved road access to the river, and which will allow the public a reliable point of access to the river- the single point of access along an entire 70 mile stretch - and to the 78,000 acres of previously blocked-off BLM lands, which are of wilderness quality.

The purchase of the Rattray Ranch, and the transfer of the lands into public ownership, is about more than just public access. The Thirtymile Creek is one of the most important cold water tributaries of the John Day, and a crucial spawning stream for one of the river’s strongest steelhead runs. The Thirtymile flows from The Thirtymile Wilderness Study Area on BLM lands, and through the Rattray Ranch. Over the years of use, the Thirtymile has become degraded, shallower, warmer, and with less healthy spawning areas. The plan is to carefully restore the creek, increasing the flows of cold and clean water into the John Day, and naturally rebuilding the steelhead and other native fish populations throughout the entire watershed.