HCC Conservation Forum

The Outdoor Alliance has provided an online tool to simplify the task of thanking your U.S. Representative for supporting the Great American Outdoors Act, H.R. 1957. It will help you to direct a message to your representative, and it will also suggest sample language that you can personalize as desired. You can access it at https://secure.everyaction.com/yaQ7_iujgEixPHO5X3fYEA2. 

The final version of the Great American Outdoors Act, H.R. 1957, passed the U.S. House of Representatives on July 22, and it was signed into law by the president on August 4. For reasons described earlier in this thread, this is great news. If your representative supported this bill, please write to them and thank them. (You can find out how they voted here.) If you aren’t sure about who your representative is, or how to reach them, you can find that here.

Very good news! Following a nearly four-month sojourn through the U.S. Congress, the final version of the Great American Outdoors Act was passed by the House of Representatives on July 22, 2020 and presented to the President, who has indicated that he will sign it into law. Passage of this act is a fitting tribute to its sponsor, Rep. John Lewis (D-GA). 

As mentioned earlier in this thread, the Great American Outdoors Act will provide permanent, dedicated funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Although the role of the Land and Water Conservation Fund often goes unnoticed by the public, it has underwritten well over 1,000 projects in Texas, including some 85 in Harris County alone. 

The Great American Outdoors Act S.3422 was passed by the U.S. Senate in June 2020, and it has been introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives. It will include funding for a huge backlog of deferred maintenance at the National Park Service, as well as for the Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It will also provide permanent, dedicated funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which was established more than 50 years ago, but has not been funded consistently. The Great American Outdoors Act is supported by more than 850 outdoor recreation and conservation organizations, including The Wilderness Society, The Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club, and American Canoe Association. 

Please consider writing to your U.S. Representative in support of the Great American Outdoors Act. If you would prefer to use an online form to register your support, the one that is recommended by the ACA is  https://secure.everyaction.com/88jyLYkEL0yGeXbFP3be9w2.  

National Park Service