Interior Department Secretary David Bernhardt issued a recent secretarial order on the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The order prioritizes input from local governments and leaders which will help stop unchecked land grabs by the federal government. Public Lands Council Executive Director Kaitlyn Glover says that’s a common problem that has needed correction for some time.
She says the Secretarial order will ensure that states and local leaders get the benefits out of the LWCF and that all land acquisitions aren’t allowed unless they’re voluntary.
Glover says the order means that any land that is acquired must have some type of conservation value with local leaders signing off on that acquisition.
The Great American Outdoors Act signed into law in August gave federal agencies free rein to spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year of LCWF funding for the sole purpose of acquiring new private land without any oversight from Congress.
