USDA invests nearly $66M to improve roads, trails, and water quality

News and Adventure from Glacier National Park

Earlier this week the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced nearly $66 million to improve water quality, roads, trails, bridges and fish habitat on national forests and grasslands nationwide.

With more than 160,000 miles of trails, 7,200 trail bridges, 6,700 road bridges, and 370,000 miles of roads in national forests, this investment will support urgently needed maintenance and repairs on roads and trails, including road decommissioning, and removal of barriers to fish passage, increasing resiliency on our forest lands across the country.

National forests are also home to more than 400,000 miles of streams and 3 million acres of lakes. Approximately 80 million people rely on clean drinking water sources that originate on national forests and grasslands. These investments will protect infrastructure and support healthy watersheds in national forests so that they can continue to provide clean drinking water to the people and communities that depend on them.

Of the total funding, $37.5 million will be invested in the Legacy Roads and Trails Program, which improves water quality, restores habitat for threatened and endangered fish or wildlife, and maintains access for visitors, businesses and wildland firefighters on national forests and grasslands.

$28.1 million will be invested through the Collaborative Aquatic Restoration Program to support a second round of projects to improve water quality, prevent the spread of E. coli, restore fish passage for threatened, endangered, and other aquatic species, increase landscape resiliency, and eliminate high sediment loads in drinking water systems.

For a complete list of projects being funding in fiscal year 2024, visit Legacy Roads and Trails and Collaborative Aquatic Landscape Restoration.

Jeff
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