U.S. Senate Approves Historic Gulf Restoration and Land and Water Conservation Bill
KeepAmericaFishing 03.14.12
The RESTORE the Gulf Act Moves Closer to Passage – Your Help is Still Needed!
On March 8, the U.S. Senate demonstrated its commitment to restoring the Gulf of Mexico’s economy and environment by approving the RESTORE the Gulf Coast Act (S. 1400) as an amendment to the Senate transportation bill. This historic achievement was made possible in large part to the support of thousands of anglers like you. On behalf of KeepAmericaFishing – THANK YOU!
However, our work is not yet done. The RESTORE Act must next make it through the U.S. House of Representatives.
The Situation
Introduced by Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the RESTORE amendment represents extraordinary bipartisan consensus among lawmakers and is a crucial measure that ensures that 80 percent of the funds from the Clean Water Act and other penalties assessed in the wake of the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill are used to pay for economic and environmental restoration projects in Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.
The sportfishing community thanks Senator Nelson for the provision in RESTORE that establishes a research, science and technology program aimed at improving Gulf fisheries management and monitoring. It is important to note that this legislation only directs funding from the Clean Water Act penalties charged to BP for the disaster and does not direct any new federal spending.
Thanks to the efforts of Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and others, this amendment also includes a major, much needed increase in funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). The fund provides money to federal, state and local governments for the acquisition of land and water to benefit conservation and recreation. The provision would double current funding levels for the fund to $700 million for each of the next two years and reauthorize it until 2022, for a total of $1.4 billion. The amendment requires that 1.5 percent of those funds be used to improve hunting and fishing access on existing public lands.
Taken together, if the transportation bill with the RESTORE amendment attached should win final passage, these two doses of conservation funding would represent, by some estimates, the largest boost in conservation funding in American history!
Your Help Is Still Needed!
KeepAmericaFishing is the fastest growing community of anglers united with one common goal -- to protect our right to sustainably fish on our nation's waterways. As the voice of the American angler, KeepAmericaFishing works to keep our public resources – our oceans, lakes, rivers and streams – open, clean and abundant with fish.
Across the country, preventing or limiting recreational anglers’ access to public waters fisheries is being touted as a new way to manage fish populations. This unprecedented shift undermines the achievements of proven fisheries management methods that focus on conservation and promote sustainable fishing. As a result, the past 10 years have seen a dramatic increase in bans on recreational fishing from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Texas to Minnesota.
In an effort to combat access restrictions around the country, the American Sportfishing Association launched KeepAmericaFishing to unite the nation’s 60 million anglers under one voice. Through policy, science and conservation, KeepAmericaFishing works to minimize access restrictions, promote clean waters and restore fish populations. With its conservation partners, KeepAmericaFishing works to limit and provide for review and revision science-based closures to areas in which they are clearly beneficial to the health of the fishery.
At KeepAmericaFishing, we are working to give voice to the millions of American recreational anglers who share one thing in common - a passion for fishing.
