CONSERVATION LANDS FOUNDATION

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 built on three key strategies to ensure the protection of large landscapes,: 1) Grow grassroots advocacy and engage diverse constituencies; 2) Defend and expand the National Conservation Lands; and 3) Uphold and advance enduring conservation policies. 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. The Conservation Lands Foundation will continue to build and strengthen these groups by: - Empowering Local Leaders: Our Grassroots Advancement Program gives local leaders the skills, capacity-building resources, and training and mentoring opportunities they need to run effective organizations and conservation campaigns. - Activating Advocacy: Our Field Team works hand in hand with our Friends Grassroots Network to elevate our collective voices and skills through legal training and support, government relations focused on connecting and building relationships between local leaders and elected officials, and on-the-ground community organizing. - Inspiring Engagement: People cannot protect what they don’t know, so we have launched a comprehensive communications campaign to raise public awareness of our national monuments, the threats they face, and what we stand to lose if protections are rolled back.

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 protection of the National Conservation Lands. While the core goals of our work – ensuring that the most ecologically and culturally significant lands are protected and have a diverse, effective, resilient and financially sustainable constituency dedicated to their protection – will not change, our activities will be targeted as never before on developing the Network's capabilities to withstand the road ahead and set the stage for more proactive campaigns in the future. We will also continue to inspire citizen engagement and participation and empower the public to speak out and take action to defend our public lands. 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 will defend the conservation accomplishments of the last 20 years for the National Conservation Lands and advance protections for the future.

The Conservation Lands Foundation’s success will be measured by our progress towards achieving the following outcomes: - A diverse, organized, and influential constituency advocates for the protection and expansion of the National Conservation Lands. Eighty percent of the Network is actively engaged in CLF’s defensive campaigns. Fifty percent of Friends Grassroots Network groups take part in the Grassroots Advancement Program. - Friends Grassroots Network groups stewarding national monuments under attack have the resources needed to effectively counter and build public support at both the local and national level. - Strong local partnerships are created in areas that intersect with CLF’s defensive, policy, and/or expansion goals. Partnerships include Native American tribes, Hispanic/Latino, and African-American organizations, veterans, youth, and sportsmen/women. - Presidential powers to expand the National Conservation Lands under the Antiquities Act are safeguarded. - National Conservation Lands are not diminished in size and retain their designations. One million acres are protected as part of the National Conservation Lands. - Current and potential future units of the National Conservation Lands that are under direct attack are broadly supported as demonstrated by partner involvement, supportive media coverage, public and decision-maker support. - The National Conservation Lands are defended from actions that would weaken conservation policy or set a negative precedent for future management decisions. - The American public displays resounding support for the National Conservation Lands and demands that the Bureau of Land Management lands are managed for the well-being of present and future generations.

In the face of enormous challenges,the Conservation Lands Foundation was able to achieve significant impact over the past year, including: a) Elevated support and resources to grow a stronger grassroots conservation movement. Through webinars, coaching and mentoring, consulting support, and in-person training and other regional gatherings, CLF provided more than 450 capacity-building touchpoints for Friends Grassroots Network and partner groups in 2019. b) Hosted a successful 10th Friends Rendezvous in Fall of 2019, attended by more than 160 participants – half of whom were first-time attendees – from 50 Network and partner groups. c) Mobilized the Friends Grassroots Network to obtain the submission of more than 500,000 public comments defending the future of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments during the comment period for the reduced “mini-monuments.” d) Helped to guide and support grassroots-grounded efforts to secure additional protections throughout the West. Partly as a result of CLF’s longtime engagement, one million acres were added to the National Conservation Lands in California, New Mexico, and Utah through passage of the John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation Act, and proposed protection of more than 1.1 million acres of wild public lands and rivers in southeast Oregon’s Owyhee Canyonlands, in addition to land and water protection bills in California, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico. e) Engaged in more than a dozen landscape-level plans impacting over 20 million acres, and have actively submitted or organized comments to more than 25 plans in just the past six months. f) Successfully advocated for a 12.5% increase in funding for the National Conservation Lands in the final FY20 Congressional appropriations bill. g) Improved and streamlined our communications approach and platform in order to mobilize action both within the Network and the public. As a result, more than 2,000 comments were submitted to oppose the attempt to site a highway corridor through Red Cliffs National Conservation Area, and CLF launched an individual petition campaign to protest the Interior Department’s removal of protective status for LGBTQ employees in its Ethics Manual.