Conserving and Restoring America the Beautiful
Claire Fackler/NOAA
President Biden has challenged Americans to join together in an inclusive and locally led effort to conserve at least 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030.
President Biden has challenged Americans to join together in an inclusive and locally led effort to conserve at least 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030.
On May 6, 2021, the U.S. Departments of the Interior, Agriculture and Commerce, and the White House Council on Environmental Quality released a preliminary report on Conserving and Restoring America the Beautiful. The Report recommends a decade-long national initiative to advance locally led conservation and restoration in public, private, and Tribal lands and waters toward addressing three threats: disappearance of nature, climate change, and inequitable access to the outdoors.
Guided by the eight core principles in the report, these efforts will build on NOAA’s five decades of conserving and connecting people to ecosystems, species, and special places in our nation’s marine and Great Lakes environments. Since the release of the Report, NOAA has gathered input from stakeholders through written comments and virtual listening sessions on how NOAA should use its existing authorities and associated measures to conserve and restore America’s ocean, coasts, and Great Lakes. All input received since the release of the Report will be considered equally with the input we received through a this Federal Register Notice.
Progress Updates
On December 20, 2021, the Biden-Harris Administration issued its first annual progress report on the America the Beautiful initiative, highlighting steps the Administration has taken over the past year to support locally-led and voluntary efforts to conserve, connect and restore lands and waters across the nation that sustain the health of our communities and power local economies.
Virtual Public Listening Sessions
On January 4, 2022, the Department of the Interior (DOI), in coordination with the Departments of Agriculture and Commerce and the Council on Environmental Quality, invited public comment and announced listening sessions regarding the development of the American Conservation and Stewardship Atlas, a new tool that will be used to track conservation and restoration of U.S. lands and waters. The interagency working group hosted three 90-minute virtual public listening sessions in January, 2022. The Federal Register notice is here.
