America the Beautiful

Every 30 seconds, we lose a football field's worth of natural places to development. We can change that.

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Cooperative Action Network

A big problem meets an even bigger opportunity.

Every 30 seconds, America loses a football field's worth of natural areas to development. With these areas go things we can never get back: precious wildlife habitat, water and air quality, and opportunities to connect to nature. Losing nature also threatens our resilience to weather extremes like floods and wildfires and hampers our ability to confront the climate crisis.

It's time to change course.

To confront the rapid loss of our natural places, the U.S. needs a clear plan to protect our natural world. The America the Beautiful initiative aims to conserve at least 30% of our nation's lands and waters by 2030 in order to protect biodiversity, lessen the effects of the climate crisis, and expand opportunities for everyone to enjoy nature.

We need Congress to do its part. That includes passing policies that not only protect and restore our public lands, but also create new urban green spaces, employ youth in stewardship careers, reward farmers and ranchers for enhancing biodiversity in their fields, and work together with the tribal nations who have stewarded these lands and waters for generations.

Tell Congress that we can't afford to lose any more natural places.

The Protecting America's Wilderness and Public Lands Act provides for the preservation, conservation, and recreational use of public lands, including in Arizona, California, Maine, North Carolina, Oregon, Virginia, Washington, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The bill:

Designates approximately 1.5 million acres of public land as wilderness;
Incorporates more than 1,200 river miles into the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System (NWSRS)
Withdraws more than 1.2 million acres of public land from new drilling and mining, ensuring that iconic landscapes like the Grand Canyon and Colorado’s Thompson Divide are permanently protected for future generations to enjoy

Read the bill text on Congress.gov.

Read more about the Protecting America's Wilderness and Public Lands Act here.

In May 2021, the Biden-Harris Administration launched the America the Beautiful Initiative as a vision for how the U.S. can conserve and restore America's lands, waters, and wildlife. Broadly, the initiative is a decade-long challenge to pursue locally-led and voluntary conservation and restoration efforts across public, private, and Tribal lands and waters in order to create jobs and strengthen the economy’s foundation; tackle the climate and nature crises; and address inequitable access to the outdoors. The initiative's goal is to conserve, connect, and restore 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030.

Read more about the America the Beautiful Initiative here.

Find a progress report on the Biden Administration's first year of America the Beautiful here.

The bipartisan Outdoors For All Act would create a dedicated source of funding for the Outdoors Recreation Legacy Partnership (ORLP) program, which supports projects that expand outdoor recreational opportunities in urban and low-income communities across the nation, including new trails, green spaces, playgrounds, cultural gathering spaces, and more.

Congress established ORLP in 2014. The program is run by the National Park Service and funded through the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) as a nationally competitive grant program to increase access to the outdoors for disadvantaged communities. To date, ORLP has remained a discretionary grant program, which jeopardizes funding for underserved communities who don’t have access to outdoor recreation.

Read the bill text on Congress.gov.

Read more about the Outdoors For All Act here.

America the Beautiful

A big problem meets an even bigger opportunity.

Tell Congress that we can't afford to lose any more natural places.

The Protecting America’s Wilderness and Public Lands Act

The America the Beautiful Initiative

The Outdoors For All Act