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The oil and gas sector has been a top-five contributing industry to both Daines and Gardner over their careers,according to Center for Responsive Politics data.

In a Tuesday speech on the Senate floor, Sen. John Tester (D-Mont.) called the LWCF the most important conservation tool we have at the federal level and a key driver of Montanas ballooning outdoor recreation economy. He also emphasized that he and others groups like Montana Trout Unlimited and Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, and Sens. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., Richard Burr, R-N.C., Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., have been fighting for more than a decade to secure full, permanent funding.

These victories did not happen magically overnight, he said. The fact is we worked long and hard with local conservation groups and public land enthusiasts around the country to build support where it never existed before. And our years of work finally broke the dam earlier this year when President Trump and Sen. McConnell reversed their opposition to this legislation because of overwhelming bipartisan momentum that we built on the ground. I welcome their change of heart.

Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., another longtime champion of the LWCF, told HuffPost this week that many people were surprised by Trumps sudden reversal. But I say lets seize this opportunity this is a historic chance to realize the vision of the LWCF, and we should take it, he said in an email.

Udall added that the LWCF was a bipartisan creation his father, former Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, played a large role in establishing the program and hes excited to see bipartisan support for it so many years later.

There will be a time and a place for politics and campaigning soon enough, he said. We will keep having the conversation about the administrations unending attacks on conservation, our public lands and the environment more broadly. But right now, lets just get this done for the American people.

Record vs. rhetoric

Efforts to boost fossil fuel extraction, mining and other development have dominated the Trump administrations public lands policy, often to the detriment of conservation.

The administration has led the largest rollback of national monuments in U.S. history, carving out more than 2 million acres from a pair of protected national monuments in Utah, and last week opening a 5,000-square-mile marine sanctuary off the East Coast to commercial fishing. It has weakened key conservation laws that protect land, water and air, including the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. And it has repeatedly hosted anti-federal-land advocates and even tapped fierce critics of federal land management for powerful government posts.

Supporting Trump and his anti-conservation agenda at seemingly every turn have been Gardner and Daines. Daines even signaled hed back William Perry Pendley, the acting director of the Bureau of Land Management who has extreme anti-environmental views and spent his career lobbying for the sale of federal lands, if Trump were to officially nominate him for the post. Gardner has so far avoided taking a stand on Pendley, but touted his relationship with Trump and his own role in the administrations controversial decision to move BLM headquarters to Colorado.

These things happen because President Trump and I work together for Colorado, Gardner said at a Trump rally in February in Colorado Springs.

Protecting public lands and maintaining them under federal control hasproven to be a winning platformin Western states.

Protecting public lands and maintaining them under federal control has proven to be a winning platform in Western states. Likewise, the LWCF is extremely popular 74% of Americans support fully funding the program, according to a 2018 poll by the National Wildlife Federation.

Daines and Gardner appear to have realized that they need a conservation victory to point to going into the 2020 election. It remains to be seen if this will give them the boost they need to secure another term.

Jessica Goad, deputy director of Conservation Colorado, said she is thrilled about the public lands bill and Gardner and Daines deserve credit. But she stressed that environmental leadership requires far more than supporting the LWCF, noting that Gardner has yet to back the Colorado Outdoor Recreation and Economy Act, or CORE Act, which would protect approximately 400,000 acres of public land in the state. An analysis by her group last year found that Gardner has voted against the environment 85% of the time since he became a senator.

Senator Cory Gardner is a Republican who represents Colorado. Roll Call named Gardner the most vulnerable Republican senator in 2020.

Colorado voters are really smart, Goad said. They are well-informed on the environment, and I think passing LWCF is just the start for voters.

In an interview with E&E News this week, a spokeswoman for Gardners campaign accused Democrats of being more interested in playing politics than protecting public lands and of attempting to distract from the fact that Gardner accomplished something they failed to do for decades.

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Vulnerable Republicans flip their stance on conservation bill - High Country News