The Land and Water Conservation Fund is used by land management agencies to protect recreational access, natural resources and cultural heritage sites.

During consideration of the Interior-Environment appropriations bill, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) offered an amendment that would have taken funding for land acquisition under the Land and Water Conservation Fund and authorized it for operations, maintenance, and repair or rehabilitation projects for constructed assets. Had this amendment passed, the Land and Water Conservation Fund would effectively have been raided for the foreseeable future to give priority to construction projects. Construction was not the original intent of the 1965 law establishing this fund, which stated that offshore development royalties be used to acquire new lands – an asset for an asset. Because of the sheer number of operations and maintenance projects in the agency pipelines, the Land and Water Conservation Fund might not have received any land acquisition money at all and this important program would cease to exist as we currently know it.

On September 24, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) offered a motion to table the Coburn amendment, which passed by a vote of 79-19 (Senate roll call vote 297). YES IS THE PRO-ENVIRONMENT VOTE.