Purchases will help protect salmon habitat and enhance outdoor recreation opportunities in the Upper Wenatchee watershed

information released; photo above: Wenatchee Mountains checker-mallow (Photo by A. LaValle/U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service)

Cantwell fought against attempts to redirect LWCF funds; ensured funding is used to acquire more public lands

U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and a senior member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, announced that the second FY 2026 minibus appropriations bill passed yesterday includes $22 million for two Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) project phases to secure the purchase of at least 11,000 acres of new public lands for the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest.

The budget originally proposed by President Donald Trump would have gutted the LWCF. Under his plan, only $45 million would be utilized for conservation of lands and waters through federal acquisition. Meanwhile, $387 million – roughly 43% — of the funds provided to the LWCF would have been diverted to other projects outside the scope of the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act of 1965. The bipartisan bill passed by the Senate yesterday rebuked that plan, ensuring the LWCF received its full $900 million yearly allocation as required by the law Sen. Cantwell championed in 2020.

“This Land and Water Conservation Fund grant will help us conserve at least 11,000 additional acres of forest land in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest. This purchase is a big win for local birders, hunters, and hikers, and it will help us preserve salmon habitat and prevent wildfires in the area. Congress rightly rejected plans to undermine the integrity of the LCWF and instead kept using the funding as intended – to secure natural spaces in perpetuity for the enjoyment of the American people,” Sen. Cantwell said.

The bill includes funding for a $17 million land purchase and a $5 million land purchase, both of privately-owned parcels near Leavenworth in the Upper Wenatchee River watershed, for a total of over 11,000 acres to be managed by the U.S. Forest Service.

The parcels are labeled “Phase 3″ and Phase 4” on the map above. For a larger map image, click HERE

Funding will help enhance recreation and restore ecosystems to help make Wenatchee, Cashmere, and Leavenworth more resistant to wildfire damage. Funding will also help restore downstream fish habitat, enhance recreation access, and protect habitat for threatened and endangered species including gray wolves, northern spotted owls, Upper Columbia steelhead and spring Chinook, and Upper Mid-Columbia bull trout.

Sen. Cantwell has been the Senate’s leading defender of protecting America’s public lands and the leading champion of LWCF. In June, she called out President Trump’s budget request that violated the John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act and the Great American Outdoors Act by attempting to take a significant portion of the guaranteed annual $900 million in LWCF spending for land maintenance projects, instead of following the law and spending fund on land acquisition.

She led the charge in opposing proposals from U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) to include language in the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that would have allowed the Trump Administration to sell America’s public lands to the highest bidder. On June 24, Sen. Cantwell hosted a virtual press conference to push back on Sen. Lee’s proposal. She was joined by Boise Mayor Lauren McLean, professional athletes and outdoorsmen Tommy Caldwell and Graham Zimmerman, REI leader Susan Viscon, and Backcountry Hunters & Anglers spokesperson Kaden McArthur.

When the LWCF authorization expired in 2015 for the first time in its 50-year history, Cantwell successfully led the fight to reauthorize the fund for three years despite strong opposition from leaders in the House of Representatives. In 2019, Cantwell’s legislation to permanently reauthorize the fund was signed into law as part of her bipartisan public lands package.

Under the first Trump administration, Sen. Cantwell authored legislation to fully, permanently fund the LWCF and invest billions of dollars to address the maintenance backlog on public lands throughout Washington state and around the country.

The Great American Outdoors Act, which Sen. Cantwell helped author and cosponsored in the Senate, permanently funded the LWCF at its full authorization level of $900 million per year – roughly two or three times the amount the fund had historically received.

Because the funding comes from offshore oil and gas royalties, it does not burden taxpayers or add to the national deficit. Since its creation by Washington Senator Scoop Jackson in 1965, the LWCF has supported more than 42,000 projects in communities throughout the country, including investing more than $725 million in more than 700 projects throughout Washington state.