The fund that pieces together America’s national parks

Look at the usual map of a national park and it seems to be an oasis of completely protected land. But within some of these incredible spaces, there is still privately-owned land. Managing the borders of these private parcels is a huge job for parks.

Parks are increasingly interested in owning such parcels to preserve their hard-fought wildlife corridors and biodiversity, and to increase access to public land. Mojave Desert Land Trust is one of the go-to organizations helping Joshua Tree National Park, Mojave National Preserve and Death Valley National Park acquire those small pockets of land.

So far, we have helped those three parks acquire 771 parcels of land totaling 33,044 acres, as well as wilderness, linkages, and habitat and mitigation areas.

The only way national parks can buy such land is through America’s most important conservation program, the Land and Water Conservation Fund — which is now under threat. It expires 52 weeks from now. Today, bipartisan Congressional and conservation leaders launched #SaveLWCF, a campaign to extend and permanently reauthorize the fund.

MDLT supports the campaign and in the coming months we will be sharing some of our desert success stories made possible by the fund.

In the meantime, you can find out more about the campaign here: https://www.lwcfcoalition.com/lwcf52weeks/