The Land & Water Conservation Fund in Idaho

In the mid-1960s, public land managers began looking for ways to protect and conserve open spaces for recreation and wildlife habitat.  In 1964, Congress established the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) by collecting funds from offshore oil and gas leasing and allocating a portion of them to government agencies - including the BLM - to acquire lands or secure easements from willing owners of private lands for the purpose of maintaining open spaces for the benefit of all Americans.

The BLM has been actively engaged in acquisitions and easments in Idaho using LWCF since 1990, although the agency had begun investigating purchase opportunities through LWCF several years earlier.  Since then, BLM-Idaho has conserved more than 35,000 acres using $55 million in LWCF allocations.