But today we got some good news: according to a poll released by the Pew Research Center, only 22% of Americans think we should cut spending for environmental protection, and 77% think spending on the environment should either increase or stay the same.

Investing in Conservation Gets Results

In 2011, there were 435 million visits to lands managed by the Department of Interior (DOI) — visits that supported 403,000 jobs and contributed $48.7 billion to local economies.  Clean air and water, access to public lands, and protected wildlife habitats are critical to the 37 million hunters and anglers who spent $90 billion in 2011, and to the $646 billion outdoor recreation industry, which employs 6.1 million Americans.  The National Park Service has already said that sequestration will force them to reduce visitor services and hours of operation, delay seasonal hiring indefinitely, and possibly close some or all of certain parks.

Act now — don’t let budget negotiations harm wildlife.  Click here to tell Congress that indiscriminate cuts to crucial conservation programs are not the solution.

A new report was released last week which outlined how obesity threatens America’s future. The report revealed that obesity rates climbed over the past year in 16 states, and not a single state reported a decline in the proportion of excessively overweight residents. Over 2 million children in America are obese and more than 30 % of people in more than 12 states are obese. In only four years, ELEVEN states joined that startling statistic. This dramatic shift over just a few years is frightening, so I couldn’t help but wonder, what is causing this striking change?

While iPads, 3D TV’s, video games, and computer games are all glamorous accomplishments by modern technology, time spent outdoors playing, biking, hiking, walking, etc. has progressively taken a back seat. Children ages three to twelve spend 1 % of their time outdoors, and 27 % of their time just watching TV. Incredibly, children are now actually GAINING weight over summer break! A time once spent solely on outdoor activities like swimming, hiking,and just being outside, is now putting American children’s health at risk.

Granted, childhood obesity is certainly a complex multi-faceted problem, which needs to be tackled from a variety of angles. However, a very easily-identifiable starting point is increasing the amount of time we spend outdoors, whether it’s playing, sightseeing, or even something as routine as commuting to work or school. So how do we address these issues in a meaningful way as a nation?

Luckily, Michelle Obama has made this issue a priority and launched the Let’s Move Outside campaign in a fight to address and end the childhood obesity epidemic. The First Lady rightly points out,

“Today, children experience a very different lifestyle. Walks to and from school have been replaced by car and bus rides. Eight to eighteen year old adolescents are spending an average of 7.5 hours a day using entertainment media instead of going outside.”

While the First Lady has brought the sweeping obesity epidemic to our nation’s attention, key Congressional leaders are taking steps to cut off dedicated federal funding for bicycling and walking; a cut that impacts both recreation but also safety.

House Transportation Chairman John Mica (R-FL) announced today that his transportation bill will eliminate dedicated funding for bicycling and walking, including Transportation Enhancements, Safe Routes to School and the Recreational Trails Program. This will discourage states from choosing to spend their dollars on these activities that are “not in the federal interest.”

Not in the federal interest? Funding for biking and walking projects only accounts for 1.5% of the federal transportation budget and yet make up 12 percent of all trips in the US. The spending by our government shows us very clearly that they’re not interested in investing in fun and low-cost ways for people to work towards a healthy lifestyle by only allowing us funding to support more than 4 billion bicycle trips and 40 billion walking trips a year, including trips to work, school, shopping and for recreation and tourism.

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), the lead Republican negotiator on the transportation bill, declared that one of his TOP THREE priorities for the transportation bill is to eliminate ‘frivolous spending for bike trails.’

Frivolous? In the past 6 months, TWO of my fellow co-workers were badly injured while riding their bikes to work because of the lack of safe biking trails in Washington, DC. Need more numbers? Two-thirds of all pedestrian deaths are on federally funded highways. One-third of children’s traffic deaths happen when children are walking or bicycling and are struck by cars. Bicycling and walking programs build sidewalks, crosswalks and bikeways—improving accessibility and saving lives. Any transportation cuts that affect the safety of children who opt to work/bike to school instead of taking the bus or car, should be targeted as negligent, short sighted and costly in the long run.

Cutting the funding to these programs not only makes it more difficult to encourage youth to get outside and walk or bike safely but it ultimately limits transportation alternatives, leaving no choice but to jump in a car. When obesity-associated annual hospital costs for children and youth are tripling over just a decade, we have a problem. If we expect people to adjust their lifestyles, they need clean, safe places to go outdoors and safe routes to get there.

What could be more of a federal priority than the health and well being of our children? Is cutting a that incredibly small figure of 1.5% of the federal transportation budget showing us how little the government cares about the health and wellness of our future workforce? Does the cost of bike trails really compare to the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of obesity associated hospital cost for children and youth? How short sighted is Congress to think that it is OK to spend millions/billions of dollars on health care costs for children and adults for obesity-related illnesses while not spending even a fraction of this cost for recreation improvements that would serve as preventative measure and limit obesity related disease?

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be a statistic, so I’m going to grab my bike and hit the trails before the feds take them away!

Join me, and take action: Contact your Members of Congress!

Join in the mission to advocate for and promote safe bicycling and walking to and from schools and in everyday life throughout the United States.

Learn more about the Be Out There movement to get kids outside. Find outdoor games, activities, and health tips for your children this summer!

Here’s what Robin Schepper, Executive Director of Let’s Move!, had to say about the event: 

Click here to view the embedded video.

Members of the Outdoors Alliance for Kids (OAK), the Administration and others participated in five outdoor recreation activity stations to teach youth new skills to enjoy active time outdoors in nature.

The National Wildlife Federation and REI participated in a learning station where small groups of students received hands on experience in camping. They gained new skills for enjoying the great outdoors and now know how to pitch their own tents.  

The students were excited to engage in a variety of activities including rock climbing, kayaking, healthy snacks, fly-fishing and mountain biking - and even assembled their own healthy trail mix; the perfect healthy snack for their next outdoor outing! 

Later this month, in support of Let’s Move Outside and with the support of REI, thousands of American’s will participate in the Great American Backyard Campout on June 25^th and find close-to-home parks and green spaces through NWF’s Nature Find. 

It was a fun afternoon on the White House lawn to help support Let’s Move Outside.  And most importantly, the students had a blast!

For more updates on Let’s Move Outside and Great Outdoors Month, follow me on Twitter – @PatrickNWF.

Today I’m attending the Healthy Parks, Healthy People conference at the Institute for the Golden Gate outside of San Francisco.  It is a gathering of a surprisingly diverse mix of 100 public health, park and recreation, community outreach and education organizations.  The Centers for Disease Control, U.S. Health and Human Services, National Recreation and Parks Association, leading medical schools, the YMCA of the USA, the NAACP (and NWF) are here with others to offer the National Park Service (NPS) their best advice. 

Attendees got to hear from NPS Director Jon Jarvis about the priority the Service intends to place on addressing childhood obesity and other adverse health conditions such as early onset of diabetes.

The basic idea is to make units of the NPS and their state and local outreach programs more effective at improving public health across America.

The conference is about how to achieve this in practical ways.  We heard from Robin Schepper from the Office of the First Lady, Michelle Obama, who discussed the White House’s Let’s Move Outside campaign.  She summed up its importance with the simple statement that “we have no choice but to take this critical public issue head on.”

Several panels and discussions covered specific ways to link parks with the health care delivery system, including enabling doctors to prescribe park visits as a way to treat health conditions.  An insurance company is designing a plan to provide lower rates for subscribers who make regular and frequent use of parks and trails.

There is a growing body of hard evidence that health interventions that enable people to drop weight and improve their cardio-vascular health will prolong life and reduce health care costs by millions of dollars every year.  One study of a program by the YMCA of the USA showed that people who lost 5 to 7 percent of their body weight had improved health that persisted for more than a decade.

For the Healthy Parks, Healthy People conference of 2011, the bottom line is NPS and other outdoor recreation providers are quickly becoming more integrated with preventative health care and a series of visits to parks could soon become a legitimate and respected Rx for lowering health care costs and raising happier, healthier children.

Sportsmen oppose cuts to conservation. Photo: Flickr

There’s a lot of political theater on Capitol Hill these days.  That may not be much of a surprise to anyone who has followed the Continuing Resolution (aka the ‘CR’) budget debate over the last few weeks.

But what may surprise many people are the threats to our clean air and water by political “riders” that don’t have anything to do with the budget process. Not only that, but there are a number of of proposed cuts to programs that actually boost the creation of jobs — especially jobs in rural economies.

One example of a program in jeopardy that supports jobs is the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). LWCF funds do not derive from taxpayer dollars–they are revenues from offshore oil and gas drilling in federal waters. The LWCF program works in partnership with state and local efforts to conserve irreplaceable lands and improve outdoor recreation throughout the country.

Some of America’s most treasured places have been acquired by using the Land and Water Conservation Fund, including Grand Canyon National Park, the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, and many historic Civil and Revolutionary War Battlefields. In addition, the LWCF provides matching grants to help states and local communities protect open spaces, build trails and playgrounds, and construct boat houses and other outdoor recreation facilities.

Unfortunately, the new short-term CR that was just passed by Congress cuts LWCF 16% from the last enacted budget and almost 36% from the President’s fiscal year 2011 budget proposal. That’s not all. One budget proposal, passed by the House of Representatives but not the Senate, made a decimating of 90% to the LWCF.

Further attacks to the LWCF program will have immediate impacts to projects that enhance public lands and are critical to tourism and recreation spending across the country.  According to the Outdoor Industry Foundation, recreation contributes $730 billion annually to the U.S. economy and supports nearly 6.5 million U.S. jobs. Without LWCF investments, the natural resources that are vital to the survival of communities close to outdoor destinations (think rural towns that depend on visitor spending) will be placed at risk. Without LWCF investments, many Civil War and Revolutionary War battlefields will be sold, developed, and perhaps lost forever. Simply put, without LWCF investments many places in the great outdoors will be developed and the economic benefits will be lost forever.

The LWCF is appealing to many different groups. Sportsmen support the improved access the program provides to prime hunting and fishing spots and healthy wildlife populations from protected habitat. Families appreciate local parks and trails with playgrounds to help get kids outside. Communities that depend on wetlands to act as a buffer against floods or public lands to act as a buffer against forest fires need those ecosystem services that LWCF provides.

Despite the attacks to LWCF, the program has a strong bipartisan reputation on the Hill. The American public also overwhelmingly supports LWCF. A recent bipartisan poll showed that 86% of voters nationally support committing LWCF’s offshore drilling revenues to the program.

The House and Senate are negotiating the details of a CR budget agreement in the next few days. If you are one of the many that support programs like the Land and Water Conservation Fund, now is a crucial time to make your voice heard.

Contact your elected official in Congress and tell them that enough is enough: additional cuts to the Land and Water Conservation Fund and other conservation programs are unacceptable.