This week, thanks to the support of Sen. Jon Tester and Sen. Steve Daines, the U.S. Senate passed S. 3422, the Great American Outdoors Act. This is a bipartisan bill to improve our public lands, stabilize funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund and provide economic relief to help kickstart the economy.
The federal government owns 640 million acres of land across all 50 states, much of which is open to the public for recreational use. In Montana, 27 million acres are owned by the federal government, greater than 29 percent of the state’s total landmass.