Defunding the Program That Builds America’s Public Lands
What the Trump administration just did makes their intentions unmistakable.
Sources inside the Department of the Interior are reporting that the Trump administration is preparing an order to illegally divert hundreds of millions of dollars from the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) — money that, by law, must be used to acquire new public lands — and instead reroute it to maintenance projects.
After the GOP just rammed through the largest public lands deregulation bill in American history, I know this may sound minor, but it’s not.
This is a full-scale attempt to bring the federal government’s ability to expand public lands to a screeching halt. To make sure no new parks, refuges, access points, or sacred sites can ever be added again.
The Land & Water Conservation Fund
The Land and Water Conservation Fund is the only real mechanism we have for adding land to the federal public estate. Presidents can designate national monuments under the Antiquities Act, but only on land the government already owns. That’s been a key tool in conservation, protecting vulnerable lands from destruction, and it’s currently under siege from this administration. But the LWCF is how we actually acquire new land or easements, from willing sellers, to expand national parks, forests, refuges, and other public spaces. It’s funded not by taxpayers, but by offshore oil and gas royalties. And it works. It’s how we protect critical habitat. How we connect trail corridors. How we create access points and preserve places that would otherwise be lost.
Every year, the Department of the Interior submits a list of proposed LWCF acquisitions to Congress — parcels of land that federal agencies like the Park Service, Forest Service, USFWS, etc., want to acquire. These proposals aren’t controversial. They’re usually small but strategic, a missing piece of a trail corridor, a key wetland, a landowner willing to sell. Congress almost always rubber stamps the list. It’s routine. It’s bipartisan. It’s how the system has worked for decades.
This year? DOI has refused to submit a list.
Not because there weren’t willing sellers. Not because there weren’t urgent priorities. But because this administration no longer wants the federal government acquiring land, anywhere, for any reason.
This is unprecedented. As far as I can tell, the Department has never outright refused to submit the LWCF acquisition list. It’s perhaps the clearest signal yet of this administration’s disdain for the very concept of public land.
But that’s not all.
They’re also preparing to gut the very purpose of the Land and Water Conservation Fund by redirecting its funding, which was permanently set aside by the Great American Outdoors Act, and using it for basic park maintenance instead.
Remember the Great American Outdoors Act? That was the flagship conservation bill President Trump signed in 2020. A genuinely significant law. On a bright August day in the Rose Garden — which is now paved over in concrete, in case you needed a metaphor — Trump stood at the podium, compared himself to Theodore Roosevelt, and declared:
“The Great American Outdoors Act provides $900 million a year in guaranteed funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund so that all Americans can continue to enjoy our parks, wildlife, refuges. I mean, you look at this, you look at what we do with our wildlife, and it's really been incredible.”
I left that second sentence in so there’d be no question it was indeed Trump.
Now, the same administration that once bragged about permanently funding the Land and Water Conservation Fund is trying to rewrite that law by executive order — and spend the money on routine maintenance instead of land acquisition.
And to justify it, they’ll pretend this is about “taking care of what we already own.” They’ll point to broken toilets and crumbling trails. Say we can’t afford to buy more land when we can’t even afford to take care of what we have.
This from the same administration happy to spend trillions on tax cuts for billionaires, but suddenly crying poor when it comes to spending $900 million — not even in taxpayer dollars, but in oil royalties — to protect the American landscape.
Give me a break. As if they didn’t orchestrate the very staffing crisis and budget starvation they’re now gleefully citing as an excuse.
No, this isn’t about maintenance. It’s about bringing an end the expansion of public lands altogether. They don’t want the government buying missing trail links, access corridors, wildlife habitat, or sacred cultural sites. They don’t want it buying anything. Because they don’t believe the federal government should hold land at all.
So they’re trying to take one of the last good tools we have, the only real mechanism left for expanding public lands (because they’re not using the Antiquities Act), and turn it into a mop bucket.
What This Really Is
This isn’t fiscal responsibility. No, the last shred of that phony cover vanished when they passed a reconciliation bill that adds $4 trillion to the US debt despite incessant whining about the defecit.
What this really comes down to is a worldview that despises the very concept of public ownership. That sees land as something to be sold and profited off of, not shared. That believes “freedom” means the freedom to plunder without regulation or regard for others.
That’s why they’re coming for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, just like they came for public servants, public education, and yes, even public television. Add it to the heap. Because apparently a muppet teaching kids empathy is just as dangerous as a wetland protected from bulldozers.
It’s not about size of government or “trimming fat”. It’s about smashing anything that belongs to everyone.
They laid it out in Project 2025, and they’re implementing it faster than anyone imagined.
The LWCF is more proof that government can work. That conservation doesn’t have to be a partisan fight. That we can take a royalty from offshore drilling and turn it into a trailhead, a wetland, or a strip of shoreline everyone can access. And they can’t stand that.
Because it threatens their entire narrative.
They don’t just want smaller government. They want a broken one. One that no longer functions, no longer protects, and no longer belongs to the people.
And the Land and Water Conservation Fund? It’s another domino that must fall.
Those of you reading this know we should be expanding it. Using it to keep America beautiful. To preserve access and provide opportunities for Americans in the great outdoors. To give the next generation something better than parking lots and pipelines.
Instead, they’re intent on dismantling it like everything else that works in government.
Don’t let them.
Coming Soon
Those of you following public lands news know that the recent GOP reconciliation bill is the most disastrous piece of legislation ever drafted for our public lands.
Which is why it has to be repealed. More on what we can do soon.
—Jim
You are to be commended for your outstanding series of articles documenting this administration’s complete and total contempt as well as its utter disregard, not only for the concept of public lands, but for the rule of law itself. What we are witnessing, as you astutely point out, is the looting of our nation’s public resources on an unprecedented scale. The concept of public service has been replaced by that of private gain. And, the government of the United States has been replaced by a criminal enterprise which seeks to rob the American people of what ought to belong to everyone irrespective of their socioeconomic status.
No end to it. Well you know WHAT?? WE aren’t going away