In 2020, after tireless work from the outdoor community and key voices in Congress, we helped pass a rare bipartisan conservation law: the Great American Outdoors Act. It was not Trump's idea. He did not lead the charge. But he signed it into law.
Now he is trying to destroy it.
The Trump administration's new budget proposal for 2026 takes a chainsaw to that law, gutting the one meaningful conservation victory of his first term.
This new budget diverts $387 million from the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), a program that was made permanent by the Great American Outdoors Act and protects national parks, wildlife refuges, local trails, and playgrounds in every state.
It does not cost taxpayers a dime. It is funded by oil and gas revenues to repair the environmental harm caused by those industries. Cutting it is a gift to big polluters and a direct attack on the communities, economies, and outdoor spaces that rely on it. Yet again, big polluters are taking away people's rights to clean air, clean water, and public lands.
It's not just Trump aiming to destroy conservation progress; Congress is helping him do it. The new “Big Beautiful Bill” could go down as the worst environmental legislation in American history. It would gut the very parks and public lands that the Great American Outdoors Act helped save, slashing funding, opening the door to private exploitation, and using these lands to bankroll Trump's extreme anti-environment agenda.
Trump is reversing the only good thing he did for public lands and using it to fuel a dangerous polluter-first agenda in his second term.
We helped win the Great American Outdoors Act in 2020. We fought tooth and nail to secure that win. We didn't do it alone, but the Sierra Club and our movement were a key part of the pressure that got this across the finish line.
We will not let them undo it without a fight. Join us. Protect what matters.
