The Outdoor Policy Forecast for 2026

Photo credit: Patrick Hendry

Each year, Outdoor Alliance’s policy team shares its predictions for what will happen in the world of outdoor advocacy in the year ahead.

2026 looks to be a volatile year and the broader political and policy environment is likely to have spillover effects for public lands and the outdoors. While Outdoor Alliance is tracking some significant threats to public lands over the next year, we also have cause for optimism about maintenance backlog funding and making conservation a more bipartisan issue.

Vibe Check

The last year saw some significant shifts in bipartisan support for public lands. In January, Congress passed the bipartisan EXPLORE Act. By the summer, when massive public land sell offs were on the table, lawmaker offices heard from millions of their constituents, helping elected officials from both parties take strong stands to support public lands. With clear public support, more lawmakers have joined bipartisan public land caucuses in both the House and the Senate. Over the next year, we can expect this bipartisan support for the outdoors to extend to appropriations and some staffing for the agencies, efforts to reauthorize the Legacy Restoration Fund, and pushback against public land sales.

 At the same time, it is shaping up to be a particularly volatile year politically, with both domestic and international conflicts, the midterms on the horizon, and vanishingly few opportunities for lawmakers to find leverage to push back around key issues. This will affect how lawmakers approach their work, and we are already seeing it through dynamics like the Democrats stepping away from permitting reform negotiations in the wake of administrative action on renewables. While some bipartisan cooperation to pass legislation is not out of the question, it could be a very contentious year.

Funding for Public Lands

For more than a year, most agencies have been operating under short and long-term continuing resolutions to keep the agencies open. These CRs provide less specificity in programmatic funding levels, meaning greater discretion for the administration to enact changes not considered or approved by Congress, and without certainty about future funding levels, agencies are forced to plan under worst-cast-scenario funding levels based on the President’s budget.

Last week, the House passed an Interior appropriations bill that would provide clarity and stability for land management agencies and immediately support public lands and waters. We feel hopeful that the Senate will pass an appropriations bill before the end of the month that will provide more stability and clarity for the agencies going forward.

On a similarly hopeful note, the Legacy Restoration Fund, originally passed through the Great American Outdoors Act, has helped to fund the maintenance backlog at parks and public lands for the last five years but expired in September 2025. A bipartisan group of lawmakers has promised to pass the bill by July 4 of this year, the 250th anniversary of America, and it will provide crucial funding for National Parks, National Forests, and other public lands.

Public Land Sell Off Threats Aren’t Over

Last year, threats to sell off public lands dominated the world of outdoor advocacy. We are not done with the public land sell off threats, but in 2026, they will be more nuanced, more sophisticated, and likely more difficult to mobilize people around than the proposal to sell off millions of acres outright.

While the outdoor community can expect to hear from us about saving public lands, it is going to be more complex than it was last year.

National Forests and BLM Lands Still Under Threat

The USDA will be moving forward with the next phase of Roadless Rule rescission, which would put millions of acres of national forests at risk of development and commercial timber harvest. With the DEIS anticipated in late spring, the early part of the year will be a key time to mobilize and engage lawmakers to push back against the rescission.

Interior is also moving forward with its plan to roll back the BLM’s Public Lands Rule, which will hurt future conservation and recreation opportunities.

Agency Staffing and Resources

The massive layoffs at the agencies will continue to reveal their impacts. As bad as things were last year, it was still a bit of an interlude between the choice to lay off thousands of land managers and the consequences of doing so. From trail maintenance to fire resilience to the implementation of the EXPLORE Act, this will be a year where we feel the loss of huge numbers of agency staff.

Final Thoughts

Congress has not passed a lot since the Big Beautiful Bill Act, and many Republicans are likely to approach this year as the last chance to pass mostly-partisan legislation, given the broad expectation that Democrats could take back the House next year. By summer, we expect a lot of the dealmaking to be swallowed by midterms—while a lively lame duck is possible, that will probably depend a lot on the results of the election and the incentives and mood for bipartisan dealmaking.

This moment has been fruitful for public lands in the past, however, and we are seeing public lands increasingly become an issue that policymakers on both sides of the aisle will support, with the immense outreach from constituents over the last year. Be a part of building a better future for the outdoors.