The Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program will be renewed for two years with funding set aside for the program in the next state budget.
A two year extension for Knowles-Nelson
The legislature’s budget committee met on Tuesday, June 11th, 2019 and voted to renew the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program for two years at its current funding level of $33 million per year. The two-year extension will continue funding the Stewardship Program into 2022, so the vital work of protecting land and water for Wisconsin can continue.
Conservation needs a long-term funding commitment
We are disappointed, however, that this short-term extension falls far short of a 10-year reauthorization. Together, thousands of Wisconsinites and more than 50 Wisconsin conservation, business, and government groups spoke and were clear that consistent, long-term funding is critical to land and water protection. A two-year extension of the program simply does not do that.
Grassroots advocacy has a big impact
All of us at Gathering Waters want to extend a big thank you to everyone who wrote letters, made phone calls, shared social media posts, and talked to friends and family about land and water conservation in Wisconsin. More than 5,000 letters were sent to the legislature. Hundreds of phone calls accompanied those letters. Our messages about land and water conservation were seen by tens of thousands of people across Wisconsin. All your efforts to talk to legislators helped us to build a strong, bipartisan coalition in support of the Stewardship Program.
Knowles-Nelson has many Republican and Democratic champions who are committed to caring for Wisconsin’s land and water. We’ve built a strong foundation for working towards a long-term solution for land and water protection.
Where do we go from here? We expect that when the full legislature votes on the budget, the same two-year extension of the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program will be included. We’ll watch that process closely and let you know how things are progressing. We hope that knowing Knowles-Nelson is safe for at least two more years allows Wisconsin land trusts and other conservation partners keep working to protect the places that make Wisconsin special. And we at Gathering Waters will continue organizing and advocating for ways to strengthen Wisconsin’s long-term commitment to land and water.
Thank you again for all your efforts to support the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program.
