In 2025, Runners for Public Lands (RPL) advanced our important mission to empower runners to protect public lands and expand access to nature for all. The year reinforced that staffing decisions, government shutdowns, NEPA changes, climate policy rollbacks, and threats to key protections directly shape whether our community can safely access trails, host responsible events, and steward the places we run.
RPL’s policy work centered on four priorities: defending intact landscapes (especially roadless backcountry areas), protecting science-based planning and public participation, supporting climate policy grounded in law and evidence, and strengthening agency capacity and modernized permitting. We accomplished this by working directly with lawmakers and land management officials, writing letters to Congress and agencies, mobilizing the RPL Race Director Collective, and giving individual runners opportunities to let their voice be heard at several events around the country. Below are some of the specific issues we worked on in 2025.
1) Keeping public lands public
RPL mobilized against proposals that could make public lands “eligible for sale,” because losing trailheads, easements, or corridors can erase route networks. We also joined a coalition urging House members to reject misuse of the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to rescind land use plans—actions that would destabilize planning and disrupt outdoor recreation permits and access.
2) Defending the backcountry: stopping a rollback of the Roadless Rule
RPL opposed efforts to weaken or eliminate the 2001 Roadless Rule, emphasizing that Inventoried Roadless Areas protect wild running landscapes and rural recreation economies. We underscored that new roadbuilding and expanded industrial uses would fragment remote terrain—and that expanding roads is fiscally irresponsible given the Forest Service’s already immense maintenance backlog. In addition to submitting our own comment letter, we drafted a letter to the administration opposing the rollback attempt that was signed by 92 race directors who organize nearly 550 running events across 34 states. You can read more about the issue and our letters here.
3) Protecting BLM’s Public Land Rule
RPL opposed rescission of the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Conservation and Landscape Health Rule (the “Public Land Rule”), defining conservation and restoration as coequal with other uses. We emphasized the Rule’s value in improving consistency and defensibility in decisions affecting recreation through proactive land-health and cumulative-impact management.
4) Safeguarding the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
RPL opposed Department of Interior (DOI) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) interim final NEPA rules that would replace clear procedures with discretionary guidance and reduce public participation. We urged DOI to restore codified protections and ensure recreation, climate, and cumulative impacts are analyzed. We urged USDA to withdraw its rule, restore Forest Service procedures and public engagement, and rein in categorical exclusion expansion while ensuring recreation impacts are disclosed.
5) Protecting good climate policy
RPL opposed reconsideration of EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding, emphasizing runners’ exposure to heat and poor air quality and urging EPA to maintain protections and strengthen resilience partnerships.
6) Addressing agency capacity, shutdown impacts, and the permitting squeeze
RPL highlighted that access depends on people: field crews, permit specialists, and safety staff. We raised concern about staffing disruptions that undermine trail work and emergency response. During the shutdown, we shared how “open” often meant unsupported—visitor services paused, volunteer programs halted, and new permits stopped processing—creating uncertainty for runners and race directors, and ripple effects for rural trail towns. These concerns were validated in an internal Forest Service report about the state of trails and the programs that keep them maintained in a recent Washington Post article. That report is yet another indicator of the importance of our work.
7) Stopping a reorganization plan that would hollow out the Forest Service
RPL opposed USDA’s reorganization plan (SM 1078-015), warning that eliminating regional offices and relocating staff could erode local expertise and delay trail maintenance, permitting, and wildfire readiness. We urged field-first safeguards, expanded e-permitting, and public reporting on backlogs.
8) Building durable solutions
Alongside defensive advocacy, RPL advanced solutions: modernizing outdoor recreation permitting and data systems, improving interagency coordination, and promoting best practices for event organizers (early engagement, clear mapping, transparency, and post-event accountability). We also strengthened congressional engagement on public land sell-offs, roadless area protections, shutdown impacts, staffing cuts, and permitting barriers.
Summary
If 2025 made one thing clear, it’s this: access is policy. Running on public lands depends on intact landscapes, transparent decision-making, and agencies with the capacity to do their jobs. RPL ends 2025 proud of the momentum we built—and ready to push harder in 2026: runners are not just users. We are stewards, partners, and a durable constituency for public lands.
Featured image: Our Executive Director, Kat Baker, and one of our Ambassadors, Austin Corbett, delivering advocacy postcards signed by runners from around California to Senator Adam Schiff in Washington, D.C. Photo by Jacob Banta