[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 135 (Friday, September 19, 2014)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1474]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  LWCF AND WILDERNESS 50TH ANNIVERSARY

                                  _____
                                 

                             HON. RUSH HOLT

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 18, 2014

  Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commemorate the 50th 
Anniversary of two of our country's most transformational conservation 
laws, the Wilderness Act and the Land and Water Conservation Fund 
(LWCF) Act.
  Earlier this month I celebrated the Anniversary of LWCF and the 
Wilderness Act at the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in New 
Jersey. This area was the first wilderness established within the 
Department of the Interior following the passage of the Wilderness Act.
  LWCF money has also contributed to the preservation of the Great 
Swamp, and in fact LWCF money totaling more than 400 million dollars 
has come to New Jersey. In other states around the country the LWCF has 
contributed even more.
  I, along with Secretary Jewell and many members of Congress, have 
advocated making permanent full funding for the LWCF. We must remember 
that over 50 years, in only ONE year has the LWCF received the full 
authorized funding. The idea was to take revenues from depleted 
resources, in other words from off shore oil drilling and mineral 
extraction, and use that to preserve other resources, land.
  Ecologists have made it especially clear in recent years that we 
really must have interlocking tracts of land, what Frederick Law 
Olmstead called emerald necklaces, across the country. It is not enough 
to protect only isolated places; that is not enough for migrating 
species and even plant communities, who must interact over long 
distances.
  Wilderness is important for so many reasons. Wilderness provides more 
than simply beautiful vistas, it is how nature heals herself and it is 
critically important for human well-being. What we forget is that 
preserving only a few headliner areas is insufficient. And that is why 
Congress really must reauthorize and fully fund the Land and Water 
Conservation Fund because it is critically important to this whole 
picture.
  One of my proudest moments in my now 16 year career in congress was 
in the early months in office when some of us junior members managed to 
revive the state side matching program, of the LWCF the landslide 
conservation program.
  It certainly was a proud moment and since then I have led an annual 
effort to fund the LWCF.
  This year 170 members of congress joined me in a letter to 
appropriators to provide funding for the LWCF. But it is not enough if 
we don't reauthorize it now and provide full finding.
  This Congress I am also proud to be the sponsor of two wilderness 
bills of national importance, the Udall-Eisenhower Artic Wilderness 
Act, to permanently designate the Arctic Refuge Coastal Plain as 
wilderness, and the Red Rocks Wilderness Act, to protect as wilderness 
Utah's Red Rocks area.
  We're going to get these bills passed one way or another, we must. It 
is so important, not just because of the naturalness that is preserved, 
but because of what it says about our country.
  The Wilderness Act, when Hubert Humphrey and others introduced it, 
sat around on the legislative agenda for years--Congress after 
congress. It was the support of citizen activists that created the 
momentum necessary to pass The Wilderness Act. And it will be the work 
of activists like those with the Alaska Wilderness League, the Southern 
Utah Wilderness Alliance, and the Wilderness Society that will continue 
to work for the passage of wilderness bills.
  The Wilderness Act provides some of the strongest land protections in 
the world by recognizing wilderness areas as where the earth and its 
community of life are untrammeled by humans, where humans ourselves are 
visitors who do not remain.
  From the Great Swamp Wilderness in New Jersey to the Arctic Refuge in 
Alaska--wilderness is essential to safeguard our nation's most wild and 
beautiful areas, not simply to preserve beautiful scenery, but to give 
nature the necessary resilience to sustain itself, and also to give 
humans places to renew and master ourselves.

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