ConservAmerica President Jeff Kupfer released the following statement regarding the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee’s hearing examining the administration’s plan to hold just three offshore oil and gas lease sales in the next five years:
“No one is talking about the adverse conservation impacts of the Biden Administration’s historically small offshore leasing plan. The largest source of conservation funding in the U.S. comes straight from offshore oil and gas leasing. So the administration’s decision to offer the minimum number of oil and gas lease sales legally possible will strip millions from programs like the Land Water Conservation Fund which supports public outdoor recreation and conservation projects. Just this summer, Interior announced that it was allocating from the LWCF nearly $300 million across all 50 states and territories. With this new approach on offshore leasing, those kinds of announcements will increasingly be a thing of the past.”
Last year, ConservAmerica wrote a paper focusing on the impact of the Land Water Conservation Fund and showcasing how environmental protection, conservation, and energy development are not mutually exclusive.