S. 753 would authorize the appropriation of $20 million annually over the 2022-2028 period for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to award grants to Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania for the acquisition and conservation of land within the Highlands Region. The bill also would authorize the appropriation of $1 million annually over the 2022-2028 period for the Forest Service to assist those states with conservation of farms and forests on private land.
For this estimate, CBO assumes that the bill will be enacted late in fiscal year 2022 and that the authorized amounts will be provided each year. Using information from USFWS and based on historical spending patterns for similar activities, CBO estimates that implementing S. 753 would cost $69 million over the 2022-2026 period and $78 million after 2026.
In 2021, USFWS allocated $10 million from the Land and Water Conservation Fund for grants to states for acquisition and conservation of land in the Highlands Region. (Amounts in the fund are available to USFWS and other land management agencies without further appropriation.) CBO estimates that if the bill was enacted, amounts authorized to be provided in subsequent appropriation acts would be additional to amounts allocated from the fund; thus, enacting S. 753 would have no effect on that direct spending.
