User:Engizo/Great American Outdoors Act

Effects
At the time of its implementation, the GAOA was meant to address the backlog of maintenance and allow parks to restore natural areas. As of April 2024, the funding has addressed $774.9M of deferred maintenance, completed 254 projects with another 377 in progress. These projects span across all 50 states, including the District of Columbia and various U.S. territories. The GAOA, through the LWCF, contributes to “state and local assistance”. Which serves things like Urban Park and Recreation Recovery program and the Federal Land to Park Program. Since 2021 these projects have provided over seventeen thousand jobs and contributed a yearly average of $1.8 billion dollars to local economies.

A few examples of completed projects are the Intermountain Region Restoration, Reviving Treasured Trails of Montana , and Repaired Big Four Ice Cage Bridge.

Background
Before the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA), the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) received funding in the form of yearly allocations from the government generated by oil and gas leases, however, the amount allocated was not consistent from year to year. Additionally, the funding they received was shared with other programs, like the Cooperative Endangered Species Conservation Fund. The $900 million dedicated to the LWCF is shared between state and local governments, National Park Service (NPS), Bureau of Land Management (BLM), U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS), and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS). When the GAOA was enacted in 2020, the Department of the Interior Task Force, composed of members from the BLM, NPS, FWS, Bureau of Indian Affairs and other organizations established goals to ensure proper use of the funding. These goals are focused on supporting the public and employees when visiting and working in these natural spaces, as well as discovering new ways these places can be used in the future, like creating new jobs and reducing the effects of climate change.

The GAOA created the National Parks and Public Land Legacy Restoration Fund (NPPLLRF) to address the maintenance backlogs in the National Parks. The NPPLLRF receives up to $1.3 billion per year from 2021 until 2025, which adds up to $6.5 billion. In 2018, the NPS appraised the maintenance backlogs to be $11.9 billion, caused by wear and tear from a rapidly increasing amount of visitors to the parks every year. The lack of resources and accessibility to the parks makes the maintenance required a demanding task.