CONSERVATION LANDS FOUNDATION

The National Conservation Lands currently encompass over 36 million acres of public land, more than 2,400 river miles, and approximately 6,000 miles of trails throughout the West. The Conservation Lands Foundation (CLF) works to ensure our National Conservation Lands’ natural, cultural, and historic values are protected; that they include all lands worthy of protection; and there is a strong, diverse grassroots movement that supports the protection and stewardship of these landscapes. Building authentic and effective community-based action is key to the protection and expansion of the National Conservation Lands. CLF’s focused efforts to build the capacity, strength, and diversity of our Friends Grassroots Network and other partners, and activate advocacy at the local and national level translates to effective defense, protection and stewardship of millions of acres of public lands for future generations.

The past four years called on all of us to defend protections for our public lands. From the illegal reduction of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments and more than a dozen destructive resource management plan revisions to the dismantling of the Bureau of Land Management’s Washington, DC headquarters and fast tracking of oil, gas and mining development activities─we have stood strong and fought back against the administration’s actions every step of the way.

While we fought battles on the ground and in the courts, we also worked with our Friends Grassroots Network and partners to build up congressional champions, successfully protecting millions of acres of public lands through the John S. Dingell, Jr. Act and the Great American Outdoors Act. Both of these pieces of legislation show that, despite divided politics, public lands are treasured by a majority of Americans and can be a bi-partisan issue that will help us heal as a nation.

Our specific goals include:
- Initiating near- and long-term proactive campaigns to realize the large-scale protection of millions of acres of public lands critical for climate resiliency through potential legislative and administrative means, led by the Friends Grassroots Network.
- Building capacity, skills and strength of our Friends Grassroots Network through our Grassroots Advancement Program; continuing our work to build an action-oriented grassroots constituency that is diverse, resilient, and financially sustainable.
- Increasing the number of Friends Grassroots Network groups and other affiliated diverse constituency groups actively defending conservation gains, and advocating for strong management of the National Conservation Lands and protection of the Antiquities Act.

Conservation starts with community, and history has shown that places are best protected when there is a passionate group of local citizen advocates to lead the effort. Since our founding in 2007, Conservation Lands Foundation has steadily built the Friends Grassroots Network – now over 80 groups across the West – to marshal their collective influence to advocate for the expansion of the National Conservation Lands, uphold and defend strong conservation management policies, safeguard the Antiquities Act, and steward our public lands for the well-being of present and future generations. Our investments are focused on:

1. Acting boldly – With 248 million acres under its jurisdiction, including 36 million acres of National Conservation Lands, the Bureau of Land Management is the nation’s largest public lands manager and will play an outsized role in securing protections needed to meet climate and biodiversity conservation goals in the United States. We will move quickly to advance, seed and secure permanent protections for a dozen large landscapes of BLM lands across the West while championing change within the agency itself, elevating conservation in its mission and status.

2. Growing grassroots advocacy - At the heart of our model of impact and success is our Friends Grassroots Network, the on-the-ground voice for America's National Conservation Lands. Individually, each group advocates for their local lands, and together they are a unified and powerful voice for National Conservation Lands across America. We will grow our grassroots network, enhance the power of our community partners, hone their abilities and amplify their voices to maximum effect. A full third of our annual operating budget supports direct financial assistance to our 83-member Friends Grassroots Network. Marshaling the collective influence and strength of local voices in our Network, we will continue to build our powerful movement for change at the national level.

3. Engaging broad constituencies – Our public lands will be better protected, appreciated and managed when advocates are reflective of our nation and representative of our varied history and connections to lands. We will build upon and expand our commitment to embracing and fostering equity, justice and access so that people of all identities, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientation, socio-economic situations, class, religions, abilities and ages see themselves in their public lands and act to protect them.

The Conservation Lands Foundation (CLF) has a focused mission, an active and experienced Board of Trustees, a dedicated and talented staff, and a growing public awareness of the special character and attributes of the National Conservation Lands.

CLF has the experience, resources, and relationships required to successfully build and support the growing Network and partners working towards the expansion and protection of the National Conservation Lands. Together, we will ensure that America’s most ecologically and culturally significant public lands are protected and have a diverse, effective, resilient, and financially sustainable constituency dedicated to their protection.

Taken together, CLF's grassroots to grasstops strategy for building effective, broadly supported place-based campaigns and a strategic and nimble approach to defeating attacks on the National Conservation Lands, we stand ready to repair the damage done to our public lands over the past four years and advance protections for millions of acres critical for climate resiliency.

Over the past year, CLF and our partners have faced unprecedented challenges due to the sustained attacks on our public lands by the previous administration, in addition to a global pandemic. Given the challenges of this time, and the disproportionate impact the pandemic has had on many of our Indigenous partners and on rural communities, maintaining a healthy and functioning organization in this environment is a huge accomplishment in and of itself. To maintain our resiliency, the resiliency of our partners, and to successfully defend and protect our current and future National Conservation Lands, over the past year CLF:
1. Shifted support and resources to strengthen grassroots conservation and address the urgent challenges caused by the pandemic and economic collapse.
- Through CLF’s enhanced Grassroots Advancement Program, CLF held more than 20 webinars, led by five different facilitators, with more than 800 registrants that covered subjects such as virtual engagement and fundraising, allyship for conservation organizations, social media digital advocacy, best practices in HR policies and structures, and accounting.
- With expense savings on items like travel, CLF provided funding to our Indigenous-led and -serving Network partners impacted by COVID-19 and awarded end-of-year capacity-building grants to 20 Network groups.
2. Guided and supported grassroots-grounded advocacy that significantly advanced campaigns to secure the future protection of more than 1.1 million acres of wild public lands and rivers in southeast Oregon’s Owyhee Canyonlands; millions of acres of lands critical to climate resiliency, connectivity, and migration, and sacred to several Tribes in Northern and Southern Nevada; and New Mexico’s last free-flowing river, the Gila River, through a potential Wild & Scenic designation.
3. Leveraged in-house staff expertise in legal and policy support and government affairs with contractual support to fight attempts to open up public lands to destructive and extractive uses, including support to prevent intensifying efforts to permit a four-lane highway through critical desert tortoise habitat in the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area, and to stop an open-pit gold mine from being permitted in an area of the California Desert Conservation Lands.