Our Promise to Advocate for the Outdoor Community
Photo credit: Cody Perry, Dolores River, Colorado.
Over the last ten years, Outdoor Alliance has worked to channel the values of the outdoor community to keep public lands public, make progress on climate, conserve land and water, and advance policies that protect recreation and the outdoors. The news that President Trump was elected for a second term heralds changes for public lands and waters, the climate, and outdoor recreation.
Outdoor Alliance is well-prepared to challenge problematic ideas and to continue to push for positive progress for outdoor recreation and conservation. Outdoor Alliance will always work to protect the outdoors and to rally the voices of outdoor recreation community to defend what we love. We have a history of working in a bipartisan fashion—ensuring that we are not only defending the public lands and waters we all hold dear, but building crucial bipartisan support to create resilient and lasting wins.
Over the next four years, Outdoor Alliance will shore up the progress and momentum we have made and will continue to rally the outdoor community to support the outdoors.
We Will Need to Defend Public Lands and Waters
Outdoor Alliance will continue to challenge ideas that threaten to undermine outdoor recreation and our public lands and waters. Although Trump’s team has yet to share significant policy proposals, we do expect some challenges on outdoor issues. These include potential rollbacks of national monuments or challenges to the Antiquities Act, efforts to roll back recent climate efforts, and a desire to reshape our land management agencies, including the Park Service, Forest Service, and Bureau of Land Management. We are concerned, too, about plans to increase fossil fuel production, which will exacerbate climate change.
As we always have, the outdoor recreation community will stand up for public land and water protections and the American tradition of conserving the outdoors and everything they provide. Our community is a vital, powerful, and bipartisan voice for conservation.
Public Lands are a Bipartisan Value
While we do expect some defense work, Outdoor Alliance has also been successful at generating wins for outdoor recreationists under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
Many of the most significant conservation successes over the last ten years have been won because they had strong bipartisan support. More than half of Americans participate in outdoor recreation, which sustains more than 5 million jobs and generates $1.1 trillion in GDP each year. The human-powered recreation activities Outdoor Alliance and our member organizations represent—paddling, mountain biking, hiking, climbing, surfing, backcountry skiing, and mountaineering—are deeply important for Democrats and Republicans alike. These shared values and our community’s willingness to speak up for public lands and waters have led to important conservation wins in divided Congresses and across different administrations.
Some of our biggest bipartisan successes include the Great American Outdoors Act, which provided billions of dollars in funding for trails, parks, and public lands and waters across the country. A year prior, Outdoor Alliance led the effort to pass a historic public lands package that included more than 14 million acres of public land protections and permanently reauthorized the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
The outdoors can unite us. And no matter what happens in the years ahead, you’ll be able to depend on Outdoor Alliance to be a voice for the outdoor recreation community, defending conservation progress and working to secure more. Since Outdoor Alliance became a registered nonprofit ten years ago, we have excelled both at defending public lands and we have brought the bipartisan values of the outdoor community to both Republican and Democratic offices. Part of our work is ensuring that lawmakers understand that protecting the outdoors is a bipartisan American value—and your voices are a big part of that.
Ready for What’s Next
Adam Cramer, Outdoor Alliance’s CEO, said “Public lands and waters are not a Democratic or Republican value, they are an American value. Over the years, we have seen lawmakers come together on outdoor recreation unlike almost any other issue. The votes to protect public lands, fund parks and national forests, and retain the Land and Water Conservation Fund are all proof that an affection for outdoor recreation runs deep in this country and crosses partisan divides. Over the next four years, Outdoor Alliance will protect the progress we have made and will continue to rally the outdoor community to support the outdoors.
Millions of Americans are counting on us to protect public lands and waters, and we will continue to deliver these protections.”
We’ll achieve this by:
Staying on top of public land policy and pushing back against proposals that undermine public lands and outdoor recreation
Educating and empowering outdoor enthusiasts to turn their passion for the outdoors into action that moves the needle in D.C. through our action alerts
Fostering relationships with both Democrats and Republicans to advance resilient public lands and conservation wins
Working with leadership at the land management agencies and the White House to share and advocate for the outdoor recreation community’s priorities
Building relationships between recreation leaders on the ground and lawmakers through our innovative Grasstops Collective
Our work—and we hope you join us—over the next four years is to make sure lawmakers know that public lands and outdoor recreation are a winning political issue and that threatening those values will not stand. Despite the pressures of powerful special interests, outdoor recreation issues have the power of people on their side.
Over the next four years, and as we’ve done the last ten years, Outdoor Alliance will continue to advocate for the outdoor recreation community, for protected public lands and waters, for climate action, for funding the outdoors, and for policy that improves sustainable outdoor access.
We can’t do this work without you. Join us.