NRA wants highway conferees to keep funding for land and water conservation

The National Rifle Association is siding with environmentalists in a fight over money for land and water conservation that activists are lobbying to keep in a final compromise on a new surface transportation bill.

In a letter to members of the 47-member committee that has been conferencing on a possible House-Senate transportation funding deal, the normally conservative NRA called for Congress to keep a provision in the Senate's version of the transportation bill that provides money for the land and water conservation trust fund until September of 2013.

"The Senate version of the transportation act of 2012 includes authorization and funding for a key bipartisan provision important to our members, 'Making Public Lands Public,' " NRA Director of Federal Affairs James Baker said in a letter to the conference committee that was obtained by The Hill from a Democratic source.

"MPLP would improve access for hunting, fishing and other recreational activities on public lands, as well as create significant economic activity in local communities," Baker continued.  "Participation in hunting, fishing and recreational activities faces serious challenges, in part due to the lack of access to public lands. Improving access will increase participation in these activities by opening hundreds of thousands of acres of currently inaccessible public lands."

The issue has garnered attention as lawmakers are nearing a deadline for reaching a deal on a new transportation bill before a temporary extension of the measure that was supposed to expire in September of 2009 runs out. Last week, a group of 150 Democratic lawmakers wrote a letter to highway conference committee leaders Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) also asking them to keep the land use money in whatever compromise is reached between the House and Senate.

"The LWCF is and always has been a bipartisan program and is a proven economic driver that ensures all Americans have access to outdoor recreation opportunities," the Democratic lawmakers wrote.

A Republican member of the transportation conference committee from the House has argued that without the appropriation for the land use trust fund in the Senate's version of the transportation, there is no money for the program.

"If anything, the LWCF is detracting from resources that could be applied to improving our infrastructure and transportation needs in order to buy more land," Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) said in a statement provided to The Hill last week. 

"As it stands, the federal government is already struggling to manage the more than 660 million acres it already owns," Bishop continued. "Clearly, the last thing it needs is more land.”

If lawmakers do not agree on at least a 10th extension of the highway funding legislation by Saturday, the federal government's ability to spend money on road and transit projects will run out. The measure also contains the government's authority to collect the 18.4 cents-per-gallon gas tax that is traditionally used to pay for transportation projects.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Wednesday he was confident that lawmakers are “moving ... towards an agreement” on the transportation bill.

---