Protection of our lands is up to 'you and me'

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

When the sun comes shining, then I was strolling,

With the wheat fields waving, the dust clouds rolling,

The voice come a-chanting, and the fog was lifting.

This land was made for you and me.

— Woody Guthrie, “This Land Was Made for You and Me”

The folk song still sung by school kids nearly 80 years after it was written is easily understood as a celebration of the nation’s beauty and an invitation to explore and enjoy it.

But Guthrie’s words also imply a responsibility to protect and care for the lands made for you and me.

As the nation celebrates National Park Week this week through Sunday, there’s an opportunity to encourage action by Congress on two pieces of legislation that can honor that responsibility.

Congress — even in a time of political turmoil — took significant bipartisan action in February with the passage of a package of public lands legislation that included permanent authorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

Created in 1964, through the efforts of Everett’s Sen. Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson, the fund — financed not by taxpayers but by royalties from offshore oil drilling — has provided millions of dollars each year for the purchase and preservation of public land and water projects throughout the nation, development at national parks and matching grants for park and public lands projects at the state and local level, protecting more than 7 million acres and funding $16.8 billion in projects throughout the nation.

The fund’s permanent reauthorization restores certainty to a program that had twice lapsed in recent years in partisan bickering over public lands, ending years of nearly automatic renewal and agreement on the need to fund acquisition, development and protection of lands for parks and conservation purposes.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/editorial-protection-of-our-lands-is-up-to-you-and-me/?utm_source=DAILY+HERALD&utm_campaign=f6c188141a-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d81d073bb4-f6c188141a-228635337