Good public land conservation is being proposed all the time. The Public Land in Public Hands piece of legislation introduced earlier this year is proof of that, as it's meant to safeguard public lands while an administration does its level best to sell every square acre of it to extractive industries.
However, due to a variety of reasons on both sides of the aisle—I have a litany of issues with how both Democrats and Republicans treat public lands—they're struck down, never voted on, or fail to capture enough critical proponents that they die on the vine that is Washington's bureaucracy.
One such piece of legislation likely headed toward the great scrap heap in the sky is the Recreational Trails Program Full Funding Act of 2025. It's a mouthful of a legislative title, but it represents some truly key initiatives that'd be a great boon for public land access, yet likely won't get enacted. That is, unless enough folks call their state and federal representatives and start demanding they speak up for public lands.
Yep, I'm going to ask you to do some homework. But it's literally the bare minimum.
The legislation is basically a fix of the earlier Recreational Trails Program, which was meant to help fund public land access, trail improvements, and conservation through taxes levied on federal fuel taxes. However, the RTP only received a fraction of those taxes, which has made provisions within the bill harder to achieve, i.e. ensuring your public lands are accessible and nice and orderly for everyone to enjoy.
This update, however, would close the loopholes, stating, "the recreational trails program under section 206 of title 23, United States Code, funds development and maintenance of valuable trail infrastructure across the United States; [and] benefits millions of diverse trail users, including users who participate in hiking, bicycling, in-line skating, equestrian use, cross-country skiing, snowmobiling, off-road motorcycling, all-terrain vehicle riding, 4-wheel off-highway vehicle driving, and other off-road motorized vehicle use."
It then adds, because trail infrastructure "contributes significantly to national transportation, economic development, health, public land access and enjoyment, and other national priorities;" it "should be funded at a level commensurate with tax contributions from nonhighway vehicle recreation."
Basically, the new legislation would make it so that states could collect the proper amount of money from federally imposed fuel taxes to fund adequate public land conservation, trail access and upkeep, and more. But here's the bitter pill to swallow, because this legislation benefits public lands, our representatives are likely to kill it.
Right now, there's a fight occurring within the halls of Congress to basically sell all of our public lands. They've turned the Department of the Interior over to DOGE, they've pushed out Executive Orders to sell public land to housing developers and extractive industries, and there's a concerted effort for states to claim ownership of public lands by a number of state reps that don't care one iota about your public land access. And that momentum, despite being fought tooth and nail by a group of outdoor advocates, is hard to battle given the funding and organization they've showed.
The one thing we can do as citizens, however, is become an absolute pain in the butts to our elected representatives. We can call (link to the Congressional switchboard here), we can write (link to Congressional emails here), and we can fax (link to how to fax your representatives here) them our opinions. We can show up at their offices and demand we be heard. I know that sounds like it's nothing, but if enough public land users show up and call out these attacks, or support something like the above legislation, we'll win the day.
We just need to show up.
