McClatchy Washington Bureau
Posted on Wed, Feb. 15, 2012
Interior Dept. faces resistance in push for more public lands
Rob Hotakainen | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: February 16, 2012 07:49:00 AM
WASHINGTON — It's cost $15 to shoot a duck since 1991, but that will change if President Barack Obama gets his way. Under the president's new budget proposal, the cost of the federal duck stamp required for hunting would rise to $25 next year, a move aimed at making it easier for the Interior Department to buy more land for migratory waterfowl.
It's just a small example of how the Interior Department wants to get both larger and leaner in the coming year, relying more on fees and less on tax dollars.
Seeking a budget of $11.5 billion, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has big plans. He wants to make the U.S. the world's top tourist destination and to get more visitors into the national parks. Appearing before a House of Representatives committee Wednesday, Salazar called the parks "the envy of the world."
The department, which already controls 20 percent of the nation's public lands, is proposing to use $212 million in public funds to buy land for more parks and wildlife refuges, including multiple sites to commemorate the Civil War.
In addition, the department wants to buy more land with $450 million from the nation's Land and Water Conservation Fund, a 30 percent increase from this year's purchases. It's a separate fund that doesn't rely on tax dollars, instead using royalties from oil and gas drilling.
In Washington state, for example, the Interior Department wants to use $1 million from the special fund to acquire 226 acres to expand Mount Rainier National Park, and another $1 million to pay for a 201-acre expansion of the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge. Supporters of the Rainier expansion project say it would allow the National Park Service to protect the wild Carbon River — a habitat for salmon and steelhead — and give the public more recreational opportunities. Nisqually provides a habitat for waterfowl, songbirds, raptors and wading birds.
Since the conservation fund was created in 1965, it's helped protect many Washington state icons, including Mount Rainier, Olympic and North Cascades national parks, the Pacific Crest Trail and the Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge.
The expansion plans could pose a big challenge for the National Park Service, which runs 397 parks in 49 states but would lose 218 employees under the new budget. Like most other federal workers, the remaining 25,000-plus employees would get pay raises of 0.5 percent next year, coming on the heels of a salary freeze this year.
It also could be a heavy lift for Congress.
Critics, including Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, contend that the federal government already has too much property to maintain.
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