Sportsmen's groups today urged support for a provision in the Senate transportation bill that would send billions of dollars in BP PLC oil spill money to Gulf Coast restoration and guarantee a sizable increase in acquisition of new public lands.

In a conference call today, conservationists and a major fishing manufacturer urged outdoor publications to cover the "RESTORE Act," an amendment that passed the Senate on a 76-22 bipartisan vote. It would send 80 percent of potentially tens of billions of dollars in Clean Water Act fines to Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas to pay for economic and environmental restoration projects (E&ENews PM, March 8).

The amendment also included language to roughly double funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) over the next two years, a provision that has riled some fiscal conservatives but recently garnered the support of 32 House Republicans.

"We believe sportsmen across the country either are watching the conferencing of this bill or should be," said Jim Martin, conservation director for the Berkley Conservation Institute, which is part of the tackle manufacturer Pure Fishing Inc. "Speaking to media representatives is a very important part of getting the word out."

Martin, who was joined on a conference call today by Paul Schmidt of Ducks Unlimited and Chris Macaluso of the Louisiana Wildlife Federation, said the Gulf region provides some of the best freshwater and saltwater fishing in the world, in addition to wetlands for duck hunting and habitat for turkeys, deer and bears.

"The good news is, sportsmen care," he said. "The bad news is, often, sportsmen don't understand until after the decisions have slid by us."

Schmidt said that although about $20 billion in LWCF receipts has been diverted to other purposes over the program's 48-year history, it has helped purchase lands in a handful of national wildlife refuges in Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida and Texas.

"Our supporters, almost 1 million at DU, are pretty charged up on this issue," Schmidt said. "I know many of them on their own are reaching out to their representatives, including conferees."

The bicameral conference has until the end of the month to agree on markedly different transportation bills, raising fears that lawmakers will pass a short-term extension punting the issue beyond the November elections.

While the RESTORE Act concept enjoys wide bipartisan support and a version of it was included in the House transportation bill, funding for land acquisition may have a steeper political climb.

House Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings (Wash.), who is one of 20 House Republicans on the conference, last month said the LWCF funding was "particularly egregious" at a time of fiscal belt tightening.

In addition, he said the amendment unnecessarily extends LWCF through 2022, while the Senate bill itself only extends transportation funding for two years.

"The mandatory buying of more land under LWCF is a fiscal dereliction of duty -- especially since the government can't afford to maintain the lands it already owns," Hastings said in an opening statement at a conference meeting. "The maintenance backlog on America's federal lands registers in the multiple billions of dollars. Congress should be addressing this backlog, not adding to it."

But the measure late last month picked up support from more than 30 House Republicans, including Rep. Mike Simpson (Idaho), the chamber's chairman in charge of funding land management agencies.

In a letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the lawmakers called the LWCF amendment "a continuing investment in the economic driver that our federal, state and local public lands represent."

Noting the wide bipartisan support in the Senate, the lawmakers said the amendment would directly address several of the sportsmen's most pressing conservation, access and funding problems.