America the Beautiful Act honors Theodore Roosevelt’s conservation legacy

Theodore Roosevelt always went big. That was especially so with our national landscape. He left America a remarkable conservation inheritance. During his presidency, he protected some 230 million acres of public land — roughly one-third of all federal land that exists today — and helped establish conservation as an enduring American ideal.

More than a century later, honoring that legacy requires more than protecting land. It requires taking care of what we already have.

That is the promise of the America the Beautiful Act, bipartisan legislation currently making its way through Congress that offers a smarter path for funding the stewardship of America’s national parks and public lands. The act dedicates resources to the upkeep of what we already own, making those dollars work harder, and asks international visitors to contribute more toward the care of the extraordinary places they travel here to enjoy.

The need is hard to miss.

National parks may be, in the words of Wallace Stegner, America’s best idea, but behind the postcard views lies a massive $24 billion maintenance challenge. Roads and bridges need repair. Trails and campgrounds are deteriorating. Water systems, visitor facilities and historic structures are aging.

These problems lack the romance of creating a new national park, but conservation at its core is about taking care of what you own.

A rancher who buys more land while letting his fences fall down isn’t practicing good stewardship. Neither is a government that lets the public’s lands fall into disrepair.  

The America the Beautiful........

© The Hill