The Conservation Alliance harnesses the power of businesses from a wide range of industries to protect outdoor spaces and wild places. We drive a proactive agenda to protect nature utilizing strategic advocacy and grantmaking, leveraging business influence, and building deep partnerships with grassroots organizations and local communities to collectively deliver high impact conservation outcomes, protecting North America’s outdoor places and wild spaces for everyone. Since 1989, we’ve helped protect over 124 million acres and 4,964 river miles, remove or halt 43 dams, purchase 22 climbing areas, and designate five marine reserves and one national marine sanctuary.
In 2025 and 2026, we are investing additional advocacy resources in six priority campaigns. We have chosen these campaigns utilizing a variety of lenses, including where our member base is strong, how much we have previously invested in these campaigns, and the likelihood that our business voice can successfully move the needle and help our on-the-ground partners meet their goals. Many of these priority campaigns may also have a bipartisan opportunity to retain or gain protections. We announce our Advocacy Priority Campaigns once a year. In collaboration with our grantees, we work to identify land and water conservation opportunities that are urgent, vital, and need national attention.
Public Land Grab Defense
What’s at stake?
A number of congressional, administrative, and judicial efforts have recently been waged against the American people in an attempt to seize and sell our public lands to special interests. This agenda to erode bedrock land management laws and privatize public lands threatens the nation’s powerful $1.2 trillion outdoor economy. If sold from federal jurisdiction to states, real estate developers and the extractive industry would benefit at America’s collective expense. Efforts to privatize public lands ultimately undermine the very notion that federal agencies can own and manage land, a privilege that has benefitted generations of outdoor enthusiasts in every corner of our country. Ultimately this will endanger outdoor access, conservation efforts, and economic vitality for communities reliant on outdoor recreation.
Although the threats to sell or privatize Americans’ prized public lands have existed for decades, an unsuccessful lawsuit filed by the State of Utah escalates the situation, demonstrating that this effort has found new life under a new congress and administration. There are growing demands and prioritization to both decrease the nation’s deficit, while still extending tax cuts for certain groups of Americans. The idea that selling off America’s public lands to pay our country’s debt is one gaining steam. Once our public lands begin to be sold off or developed, there is no way for Americans to guarantee their ecological, cultural, or recreational value.
What’s the solution?
There is overwhelming public support for our nation’s public lands, and there are extreme economic implications that could come from privatizing these lands nearby gateway communities throughout the west and beyond. Specifically, TCA’s members rely on the existence of and access to public lands. It is pertinent that TCA members and partners illustrate the potentially devastating impacts of public land sell offs to businesses of all sizes across the country.
TCA is driving a proactive agenda to protect federally managed public lands. TCA and our members will advocate as the national business and recreation voice for conservation, highlighting the economic benefits of maintaining federally-managed public lands. Along the way, TCA will keep our members informed on any developments at the congressional, administrative, and judicial levels and mobilize businesses against any efforts that could lead to major public land sell offs from federal to state or private ownership.
TCA will galvanize members and partners to ensure efforts to privatize public lands are met with commonsense, economic arguments that result in public lands staying in public hands.