We’ve been playing defense. Save Public Lands is the offense.

 

Paul Hendricks — Executive Director of The Conservation Alliance — joins me this week to talk about why this campaign is different. After a year and a half of reacting to attack after attack on our public lands, the outdoor community is shifting its posture. Not whack-a-mole. Not issue by issue. One unified message: these lands are part of who we are, and we’re going to protect them.

 

The outdoor industry fuels a $1.3 trillion economy. Nature-dependent businesses span every sector — gear manufacturers, outfitters, suppliers, breweries, and businesses that simply have a river in their backyard. When all of those voices show up together in DC and at state houses, elected officials listen.

 

A note from Missy: Paul said something that is so important for us all to hear. The Roadless Rule impacts forests from Alaska to North Carolina. Conservation easement law changes affect private landholders across the entire country. This is not a Western issue. This is an everybody issue. If you haven’t signed the petition yet, savepubliclands.us. Four fields. Thirty seconds.

Sign the Petition
Image of a field in Shenandoah National Park at sunrise with episode title written on top of it

Episode Guest

Paul Hendricks — Executive Director
The Conservation Alliance

Sign the Petition – Take Action Now

→ savepubliclands.us

Four fields: first name, last name, zip code, email. Submit. Then tell five people.

Three demands:

  • No sell-offs of America’s public lands
  • No backroom deals that cut everyday people out of the process
  • No giveaways to foreign mining companies

Signatures will be delivered to Congress and state houses on National Public Lands Day, September 26th, 2026.

Show Notes & Links

Transcript

Save Public Lands: Proactive Vision and Unity
The Parks Podcast, Episode 83 | Paul Hendricks, Executive Director, The Conservation Alliance
Launching Save Public Lands

Missy Rentz: I’m excited to welcome Paul Hendricks to the Parks Podcast. Paul is the Executive Director of The Conservation Alliance. Paul, welcome.

Paul Hendricks: Thank you. Thanks for having me, Missy. It’s good to see you again.

Missy: It’s good to see you too, and I’m really excited because so often I talk to you and your team about things that are Conservation Alliance based, and we’re reacting to what’s going on. And today we’re talking about Save Public Lands, which we introduced last week. It launched last week. But this is a campaign — it’s a proactive approach to saving our public lands. Can you tell us a little bit about it and how the shift to the proactive just puts another spin on things?

Paul: Yeah, totally. As I’m sure you’ve talked about a lot on your podcast and with people you connect with, unfortunately we’ve been in a very defensive posture the past year and a half as it relates to our public lands. I think there’s been so many things that have come at us, and then it’s like we have to jump in to protect these amazing places, these amazing resources for everything they mean to so many people.

Paul: But at some point, if you take a sports analogy, you can’t just play defense forever. You’re never gonna win. You’re never gonna push towards a goal. And at some point we have to move beyond defense. What Save Public Lands is intended to be is a really proactive, offensive campaign that unites people across all public lands users — whether it be different recreationists, tribal interests, local communities — and say, “Hey, these are the backbone for so much of what we do. We need to get out there, and we need to tell the public, we need to tell brands, we need to tell our elected officials that this is part of who we are, and we are going to protect it.” And if we start getting that message out there proactively, we feel like we can build more and more advocates across government, across the public sector, across the private sector, who are going to start to realize and go to bat and make sure that we’re protecting things proactively, and we’re not always caught on our heels on the defensive side of things.

What It Means When the Outdoor Industry Shows Up

Missy: The way it was set up for me — Fitz was talking about having a wagon with one million signatures, pulling it up to the Capitol Building and to all of the meetings that you’re going to. The outdoor industry is massive. What message does it send when the outdoor industry shows up to our state and federal elected officials?

Paul: Yeah, it’s a great question. I think when you look at different public lands related things, we often see the economics be skewed in one specific direction. We always hear about, oh, what’s the economic value of oil and gas development on public lands? But if you look at protecting public lands and the economics of that, it fuels a $1.3 trillion economy. Which is huge. And I don’t think we realize that.

Paul: So the goal here is to unify this entire industry and other businesses who aren’t accounted for in that ledger, but care about nature — who go out there, whose customers are out there, whose business is built on that — to say, “Hey, this is core to our business infrastructure,” just like it is with an oil company who’s gonna be drilling. That land is part of their infrastructure. This is part of our business infrastructure. It is a stakeholder. It’s part of our bottom line, and we are here to protect it. And if we can do that collectively, we can make a lot of noise, and we can actually start to bring that economic argument into the halls of our elected officials who listen to dollars and cents and jobs and all that type of stuff right now.

Paul: So the goal is to unify that and say, “We are here, and we’re gonna be pragmatic. We’re gonna be great partners going forward, but this is part of who we are as a business, and our fiduciary responsibility is to protect our businesses — and therefore, we’re going to protect public lands.”

Who Counts as a Nature-Dependent Business

Missy: I would guess that there are people in industries that are part of the outdoor industry but don’t realize it. Who makes up the industry? I think of trails and gear manufacturers, but there’s a ton of people.

Paul: There’s a ton of people, yeah. I don’t know the full bounds of that $1.3 trillion number. Certainly it’s outfitters, it’s the gear to get out there. But if you think about everything from the suppliers who make the gear — the zippers for the jacket I’m wearing, the seam sealing for the tent, the packaging — there’s a lot of peripheral businesses and industries whose businesses rely on people getting out there and recreating. So I think it’s actually way bigger than $1.3 trillion.

Paul: And we’ve been trying to think about — what are nature-dependent businesses? And that can be because your CEO cares about it. It can be because it’s part of your mission statement. It’s because there’s a river in your backyard. There are so many nature-dependent businesses out there, and that’s what we’re trying to unify.

Missy: Katie Johnson, one of your colleagues, was telling us in another episode about beer — and how beer depends on clean water — and we were really using that as an example to talk about how the fight for our public lands is an everybody issue. It’s not an East versus West, it’s not an outdoor person versus a non-outdoor person. I think what I’m hearing most right now is it’s a Western thing, because so many of the issues that have been brought up are happening — it’s Big Bend, it’s Alaska, it’s Bears Ears. But that’s not the case. It’s happening all over, and so I really think that getting everybody charged up in the East is equally as important.

Why This Is Not Just a Western Issue

Paul: Yeah, totally. You’re spot on in terms of perception of it being a Western issue. If you look at the map of public lands, the majority are west of the Mississippi — and I think that’s just how the US was developed, and people settled in different ways. But what we’re seeing now is this isn’t just landscape specific. It’s not just Bears Ears. It’s not just Grand Staircase. It’s the Roadless Rule, which will impact forests from Alaska to North Carolina, from California to New England. These are forests that are gonna be impacted in many ways, shapes, or forms.

Paul: And there are changes to conservation easement laws, which are gonna affect a lot of private landholders across the US. But I also think it’s always a communication conundrum — how do you get someone to care about something that’s not in their backyard? How do you get people to care about something they’ve never been to or never seen before? And I think that’s part of the goal of Save Public Lands — to say, you may not have been to this landscape, but these are ancestral homelands to some amazing tribal stewards of those lands. And we as a society have the responsibility to protect those lands and those interests.

Paul: So we’re trying to elevate and level up the ethos around public lands — to say this isn’t just geographically bound public lands. This is an attack on our philosophy of who we are as a people, of how we treat each other. And this is core to what we need to do to make sure that our kids and our kids’ kids have the future we want them to have, regardless of where we live right now.

What You Can Do — and How to Avoid Advocacy Fatigue

Missy: So what is it that we can do to help? What’s the initiative to save public lands?

Paul: The initiative right now is to use your voice in any way, shape, or form. It’s sign the petition — we’re trying to get a million signatures so we can deliver that to our elected officials. But it goes beyond that too. It’s using your communications channels. It’s using your dining room table to talk about these issues and get people excited and realize what’s at stake. Talk about the places you love to be and visit. Let’s elevate the consciousness about public lands into all people in this nation and beyond, so that they can put pressure on elected officials to say, “This is what we care about, and we want to hold you accountable.”

Missy: One of the things I think is a struggle is that because so much is happening, there’s such chaos being created around public lands — there are so many asks of people to sign or call your representatives, and the issues just keep popping up left and right. How do we manage the knowledge and the asks? Because we kind of need everybody to do everything.

Paul: Yeah. That’s a huge struggle, Missy. We’re worried about fatigue — of my staff, all of our business members, all the people out there who are being asked all the time to use their voice. And I get it. So I guess my answer is a couple-fold. One, prioritize what you’re using your voice for. If it’s not this, then make sure you’re using your voice for something. We all have to be strategic of when we can use our energy, otherwise we are gonna burn out, and then we’re not gonna be serving the greater good.

Paul: What we’re hoping is that Save Public Lands is a little bit of a meta-campaign — where you can use your voice to proactively communicate the value of public lands. There are a lot of issues that are gonna fall into it, but it’s one place that you can say, “This is what I care about,” and that message is gonna be loud and clear. So hopefully it’s less whack-a-mole, and more: “This is where we’re going to use our voice right now.” And you can know it’s going to be put to use in a really strategic way going forward.

Missy: I like that approach.

What Public Lands Mean to Paul

Missy: People can go to savepubliclands.us to sign that petition, and we’ll put links everywhere so that you can find it. Paul, you and I — public lands is part of our work. But personally, what do public lands mean to you?

Paul: Yeah, good question. I’m very fortunate to live in a place that has quick access to public lands. I grew up in Northern Michigan where there are amazing national forests, and I grew up really appreciating the value that nature provides for me as a person — spiritually, emotionally, physically. And now I’m raising my kids in that same way too.

Paul: I hope this doesn’t sound trite, but public lands mean everything to me. It’s where our family goes to connect with each other. It’s where we experience reverence. It’s where we get to clear our minds. And I was just telling you before we started recording — this past weekend, I got to take my five-year-old daughter and my dad on a backpacking trip. And so public lands for me are this amazing intergenerational connection that I think many other resources don’t have. We were able to get out there for a couple of nights and just spend time with each other. It provided this opportunity to connect across generations that was so meaningful — and I know my daughter will remember it forever.

Missy: Yeah. They’re special places for sure.

Paul: Yeah, they sure are.

Missy: Thank you so much for being here, for advocating for our public lands. We both want to encourage people to go to savepubliclands.us to sign the petition — and let’s help get a million signatures for you guys to take to Washington.

Paul: I love it. Thanks for everything you’re doing, Missy.

Missy: Yeah, thank you so much for being part of the episode. And until next time — we’ll see you in the parks.

Music for The Parks Podcast is performed and produced by Porter Hardy. Follow us @TheParksPodcast or visit TheParksPodcast.com.