Success Stories
In the past decade, Outdoor Alliance has united the human-powered outdoor recreation community to defend public lands, improve access for human-powered adventure, and conserve landscapes.
Click on any of the issues below to learn more about Outdoor Alliance’s recent successes.
Oil and Gas Leasing Reform
Outdoor Alliance worked for years to reduce conflicts between oil and gas leasing and outdoor recreation. The BLM’s final 2024 oil and gas leasing reforms include a new screening criteria directing that proposed leases with recreation conflicts should generally be deferred (that is, not offered for lease). This is a huge win and builds on years of our oil and gas lease sale monitoring work. Since 2018, we’ve documented 95 parcels offered for lease with recreation conflicts, totaling more than 150,000 acres. That record helped build the case for why these screening criteria are so important.
Camp Hale-Continental Divide
The Camp-Hale Continental Divide National Monument was designated in 2022, after a decade of work from Outdoor Alliance and our partners. Camp Hale is the birthplace of the 10th Mountain Division, where soldiers were trained in climbing, backcountry skiing, and mountaineering on trails and mountains that are still popular among outdoor recreationists today. Camp Hale is one of the birthplaces of backcountry skiing. As a National Monument, it honors American heroes as well as America's human-powered recreation culture.
The Inflation Reduction Act
The Inflation Reduction Act is the country’s largest-ever climate bill, which provides $369 billion in funding to address the climate crisis, including billions for wildfire mitigation, forest management, and conservation.
Outdoor Alliance worked with congressional leadership, generated thousands of letters from recreationists, and built a West Virginia recreation coalition to advocate for the successful passage of this climate package.
The Great American Outdoors Act
The Great American Outdoors Act provides permanent funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund of $900 million each year. It also provides up to $1.9 billion for maintenance of our National Parks, National Forests, BLM lands, and other public land.
Outdoor Alliance successfully got the Great American Outdoors Act passed in 2020, providing billions in funding for public lands and outdoor recreation.
The Land and Water Conservation Fund
The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) directs a portion of royalties derived from off-shore oil and gas leasing to fund recreation and conservation projects across the country. This essential program has funded recreation and conservation projects for more than 50 years in all 50 states yet it expired twice in the past decade.
Outdoor Alliance worked to reauthorize the program in 2015, and again to reauthorize it permanently in 2019.
Bears Ears and Grand-Staircase Escalante National Monuments
In October 2021, the Biden administration restored protections for Bears Ears National Monument and Grand-Staircase Escalante National Monument in Utah.
The outdoor community played a key role in the victory, writing and delivering thousands of letters to both the Obama administration and the Trump administration in support of the monuments, and tirelessly speaking out for protections of these prized landscapes, first for designation of the landscapes, then against rollbacks, and then for restoration of protections.
Fire Funding
After years of advocacy to reform the dysfunctional way Congress budgeted for fire suppression on public lands, provisions in the 2018 omnibus ended fire borrowing and the erosion of agency budgets over time by freezing the amount of money the agency is responsible for paying for fire suppression before it’s able to access disaster relief money.
Outdoor Alliance worked for years to reform wildfire funding relief, and Congress finally updated wildfire suppression spending regulations in the 2018 omnibus spending bill.
John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act
The John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act, also known as the public lands package, protected more than 1.3 million acres of wilderness, along with hundreds of thousands of other land protections, and mineral withdrawals. It also permanently reauthorized the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
Outdoor Alliance was instrumental in conceiving of and advocating for the package of this package of public lands bills.
Emery County
The Emery County Public Lands Management Act is notable as a Utah-led conservation effort. The area has 700,000 acres of new Wilderness, 63 miles of Wild + Scenic rivers, and promotes high-quality recreation, including climbing and mountain biking. This is the first-time ever where wilderness climbing receives specific protection.
Outdoor Alliance worked to protect this landscape and its outdoor recreation opportunities.
Methow Headwaters
The Methow Valley, located in the foothills of the North Cascades, is one of the Northwest's most popular recreation destinations. The valley is perhaps most famous for cross-country skiing, boasting North America’s largest groomed cross-country ski trail system. A proposed large-scale copper mine in the heart of the Methow Valley near Flagg Mountain threatened this treasured landscape.
Outdoor Alliance worked to secure a mineral withdrawal for this region.
Mountains to Sound Greenway
Extending from the Seattle waterfront to Ellensburg, the Mountains to Sound Greenway is an outdoor paradise with 1,600 miles of trails, the stunning Cascade Crest, excellent whitewater runs, backcountry skiing and snowshoeing, rock climbing routes, and mountain biking.
Outdoor Alliance worked to protect the Greenway as a National Heritage Area.
Oregon Wildlands
The Oregon Wildlands Act, passed in the 2019 public lands package, brought together longstanding efforts to protect some outstanding rivers and wild landscapes in Oregon. It designated 30,621 acres of Wilderness in Devils Staircase, and protected 256 new Wild and Scenic River miles. It includes Wild and Scenic River protections for tributaries of the lower Rogue River, which alone accounts for $30 million in annual economic output, as well as the Nestucca River, Molalla River, Jenny Creek, Wasson Creek and Franklin Creek, and several important tributaries of the Elk River.
Outdoor Alliance worked to protect this special landscape and the outdoor experiences it offers.
Slickrock, Sand Flats, and Moab Recreation
The iconic Slickrock trail and Sand Flats Recreation Area, along with 85,000 acres of land outside Moab, Utah were threatened by oil and gas development.
Outdoor Alliance, along with local partners, advocated to the BLM, which removed the parcels from a lease sale, citing recreation conflicts and public concerns.
The area attracts more than 160,000 visitors each year.
Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks Conservation Act
The Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks Conservation Act designated new Wilderness Areas in New Mexico, east of Las Cruces. It enhanced the rugged and expansive climbing opportunities in the area.
The Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks Conservation Act was passed in 2019’s public lands package, protecting this iconic landscape.