Legal Strategies for Public Forest Defense

retreat focus

America’s public lands encompass more than 640 million acres of parks, forests, wildlife refuges, conservation areas, and historic sites that are collectively owned by the American people and managed by government agencies. With 193 million acres under management, the mandate of the Forest Service is to “to maintain the health, diversity, and productivity of the country's forests and grasslands”. What that mandate looks like in practice can be very different depending on the priorities of the Executive Branch with the health and diversity of forests and grasslands becoming secondary to their productivity for commercial purposes.

The goal of this retreat is to strengthen our collective capacity to defend public lands in the upcoming years. The retreat will focus on sharing successful litigation strategies and opportunities, as well developing best practices for future work. We will seek to coordinate defense arguments, uplift innovative approaches, create structured communication channels, and develop deeper relationships in support of protecting our public lands.

We will not only work on coordinating legal strategies and sharing information but also on building meaningful relationships to enable collaboration and support while we seek to maintain protections for public lands.