There are 17 months remaining before the 2020 national election. It’s vital that we use some of that time for three important activities:

• identifying and supporting candidates and incumbents who will actively preserve our public lands, especially the national parks.

• identifying and opposing candidates and incumbents who want to open our public lands, especially wilderness, to mining, drilling, livestock grazing, timber cutting, motorized vehicles, and other harmful activities.

• reviewing and publicizing pending legislation at the federal level that concerns public lands and parks.

State legislatures and governors’ offices are important too. States have a huge effect on what happens in Washington DC. Eleven governorships will be decided in 2020. You can find information on these elections at https://ballotpedia.org/Gubernatorial_elections,_2020.

States with national parks and national forests that are under attack from the Trump Administration include California, Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Minnesota, Idaho, California, Louisiana, and Utah. Pending legislation contains provisions that would allow motorized vehicles, military overflights, motorized bikes, electrical distribution lines, buffer zones, permanent fixed climbing anchors, law enforcement activities, utility rights-of-way, paragliding, competitive running events, road improvement, aircraft landing, and helicopters in wilderness areas in these states. Information on these bills in Congress is presented at https://wildernesswatch.org/images/wild-issues/2019/Wilderness-Legislation-116th-Congress.pdf.

We need your help to gather information on candidates and incumbents in your state who are running for the state legislature, and what their positions are on wildlife, hunting, and activities allowed on public lands. Hunting regulations are particularly important. Legislatures often make changes in hunting regulations from one year to another that can affect predators and public lands.

Are you interested in helping Defend Our Parks to collect this information?

We’d love to have you as a volunteer. If you’d like to help, go to our Contact page. Fill out the information and click Submit. We’ll respond as soon as we can.