A congressional panel will hear testimony in Grand Teton National Park on Friday about the 2020 Great American Outdoors Act amid worries Republicans might cut a line of funding to expand public parkland.
Congress and the Trump administration have already fired public land agency staff and sought to sell Western public land for development while at the same time boosting logging, drilling, mining and new road-building.
U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman is scheduled to attend the field hearing of the Committee on Natural Resources at Jenny Lake.
Signed into law by President Trump in August 2020, the GAOA provides two distinct funding channels. One is dedicated to maintenance backlogs and the other is earmarked to create new parkland, including everything from small-town ball diamonds to places like the sensitive Kelly Parcel. The funds benefit public land agencies in the Department of Interior and Department of Agriculture.
The act provides up to $1.9 billion a year for deferred maintenance. The act also permanently provides $900 million annually to the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the account that enabled the government to buy the Kelly Parcel wildlife migration crossroad in Grand Teton.
Public land advocates worry the act’s conservation fund is in jeopardy.
“The Land and Water Conservation Fund is a question,” said Rob Wallace, a former high-ranking official with the U.S. Department of the Interior. As an independent citizen, he played a key role in the preservation of the square-mile Kelly Parcel last year.
“The administration says they support the deferred-maintenance piece,” he said. “That’s at least halfway there. I think there’s a very good chance the act will be reauthorized, at least for the deferred maintenance.”
Reauthorization and reform
The committee subtitled the hearing “Modernizing and Maintaining National Parks to Celebrate America’s 250th Birthday.”
“The hearing will examine opportunities to reauthorize and reform the Great American Outdoors Act to enhance public access, improve infrastructure, and create new outdoor recreation opportunities at our national parks,” the committee’s notice reads. The notice does not mention the other agencies — U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Indian Affairs — that also benefit from the act. Nor does the notice refer to the conservation fund.
The hearing is scheduled to be live streamed and to include testimony from Leslie Mattson, president of the Grand Teton National Park Foundation. That nonprofit raised $37.6 million to enable the Kelly Parcel conservation purchase, preventing potential development as luxury real estate. (Wyoming, which owned the school section, demanded $100 million, but federal law prohibited the federal government from paying more than the appraised value.)
Chip Jenkins, Grand Teton National Park superintendent, is also on the witness list, along with Julie Calder, Jackson Hole Travel and Tourism Board chair. Taylor Phillips, Jackson Hole Ecotours founder, and Kristen Brengel, National Parks Conservation Association senior vice president, are also on the agenda.
Many Wyoming politicians have been tepid, if not hostile, toward conservation of federal public land. The American people own about 48% of Wyoming, mainly through the U.S. Forest Service, the BLM and the National Park Service.
Wyoming’s Republican Sens. John Barrasso and Mike Enzi voted against the GAOA in 2020.
Hageman signed on as a friend of Utah when that state petitioned the Supreme Court last year to take over, own and control 18.5 million acres of BLM land — property owned by all Americans — in the Beehive State. She likened federal ownership to a casus belli — a case for war.
“[T]he federal government’s actions would amount to an invasion and conquest of that land [in Utah] if … Utah were a separate sovereign nation,” she argued in the unsuccessful pleading before the high court.
Public land advocates will offer their take on the politics of public lands in the West at a forum in Jackson, the day before the field hearings. At 1 p.m. Thursday, a coalition of conservation groups will bring the Keep Parks Public road tour to the Teton County Library.
The public forum will be the sixth stop in five Western states since the road tour began in mid-August. The forum features Peggie DePasquale, a Bridger-Teton National Forest ranger fired during the Trump administration’s recent purge of federal employees. She now works with the Wyoming Wilderness Association.
Jenny Fitzgerald, executive director of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, and Lauren Bogard, a senior director at the Center for Western Priorities, will be among the speakers.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified one of the Wyoming senators who voted against the Great American Outdoors Act. It was Sen. Mike Enzi who cast that vote. Additionally, Julie Calder’s position with the Jackson Hole Travel and Tourism Board was corrected. —Ed.
Wow! Adding one acre, at a cost of $38 million, will certainly enhance and preserve the existing 310,000 acres of Grand Teton NP. No consideration seems to be given to using $38 million to mitigate impacts to the existing areas in the Park under stress. Talk about misplaced priorities. I’m sure the Kelly parcel will be a major attraction and use area. lol.
You might want to check the facts. It’s far more than one acre.
I can pretty much guarantee you that handing over the Kelly parcel did nothing to “preserve” it for continued use as it has always been. The Feds will absolutely restrict the access the people of Wyoming have had there for generations.
And you know this how? Do you have specific examples of how access will be restricted, or are you generalizing. Would you rather the parcel was sold to a developer, or someone with deep pockets?
No I wouldnt want it sold to a developer, I wanted it to stay property of the people of Wyoming. There are access roads on that piece that allowed hunters to retrieve elk just so long as the snow isnt to deep. I would wager a hefty sum that the Park will close that road to the public in short order.
It’s kind of moot however as area 75 that the Kelly parcel is in only hands out 20 elk tags a year when 600-1000 were available a generation ago.
looks like you forgot to switch names when responding chad/jack/doug.
a bit disingenuous to pretend to be different people don’t ya think?
He doesn’t know JACK.
No one wanted that parcel sold to developers. It was doing just fine in State hands.
The Feds have blocked access to lands all over the west in the last decade.
Except you keep ignoring the fact that the state wanted to sell it and kept trying to sell it. So, they either sell to a developer or to the feds. That means if you don’t want it to go to a developer it has to go to the feds.
This should be fun for Ms.Ĥageman, her favorite County and her favorite subject, Public Lands.
The rich should pay their taxes instead of giving them our precious lands. It’s not hard to see who Wyomings delegation is supporting. They won’t be voted out cause we’re brainwashed buy rightwing news media.
Keep a close eye on her, she will knife the public in the back. Her constituency is Trump, not you or I.
this will be more of the same gaslighting, lies, and various bullshit. the chrump sycophants will eat it up with a spoon