The Places We Play Are Under Threat

BRANDS FOR PUBLIC LANDS

The Places We Play Are Under Threat. Here's What We're Doing About It.

On July 13, 2026, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments lost nearly 3 million acres of protection in a single executive order. Outdoor Tech signed the business letter urging the Administration to reverse course. Now we're asking you to add your voice.

On July 13, 2026, President Trump signed executive orders reducing the boundaries of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments by approximately 90% each. The scale of what was removed is worth understanding clearly before anything else.

Source: The Conservation Alliance, July 24, 2026. Monument boundary data from executive orders signed July 13, 2026.

Nearly 3 million acres of southern Utah, land that contains canyons, mesas, fossil deposits, ancient archaeological sites, wildlife habitat, and places of deep cultural and spiritual importance to Tribal Nations who have stewarded this country since time immemorial, lost its national monument designation in a single afternoon.

The removed lands are still federally owned. But the monument status that protected them from mining, drilling, and industrial extraction is gone. The decision goes further than the monument reductions made during Trump's first term and reopens a fight that millions of outdoor recreationists believed had been settled when the monuments were fully restored in 2021.

These are not abstract policy figures. These are the trails, canyons, and landscapes that people ride, hike, climb, and paddle. And they deserve better.

Outdoor Tech builds gear for people who choose the outdoors. Every product we make exists because wild places do. The trails people ride with Chips XV in their helmet, the campsites where a Range speaker sits on a rock, the rivers paddled with a Beacon headlamp in a pack, all of it depends on those places remaining intact, accessible, and protected.

That's not a brand statement. It's a business reality. And it's why protecting public lands is not a side project for us. It's the foundation that everything else sits on.

Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante represent some of the most extraordinary recreation and conservation landscapes in North America. World-class bikepacking, hiking, climbing, camping, paddling, and canyon exploration. Irreplaceable fossil records. Ancestral homelands. The kind of places that, once developed, do not come back.

Through our membership in Brands for Public Lands, a coalition organized by The Conservation Alliance, Outdoor Tech joined more than 115 outdoor businesses in signing a formal letter submitted to the Administration on July 24, 2026. The letter urges the restoration of full monument protections for both Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante.

The letter stands alongside signatures from Patagonia, REI, Black Diamond, Osprey, Backcountry, and more than 100 other brands representing the full commercial and advocacy weight of the outdoor industry. Together, those businesses represent an industry that contributes over $1.2 trillion annually to the U.S. economy, much of which depends directly on healthy, accessible public lands.

The letter was submitted through The Conservation Alliance's Brands for Public Lands coalition, which organizes member businesses to push back against efforts to shrink or eliminate national monuments, open protected landscapes to industrial extraction, and undermine the Antiquities Act that created those protections in the first place.

Signing a letter is one step. The harder work is sustaining the pressure. That's where your voice matters.

The Conservation Alliance has a simple sign on petition under their Monuments For All intiative linked below.  You can help us get to the 1 million signatures needed.

The Outdoor Alliance has set up a direct action tool that lets you send a message to your members of Congress in under two minutes. The tool pre-fills the contact information based on your location, personalizes the message, and routes it directly to the lawmakers who represent you.

Congress needs to hear from outdoor recreationists specifically. Not just conservation organizations. Not just businesses. People who actually use these places and whose experience of them is real and specific. If you hike in canyon country, if you've biked the trails, if you've camped in the shadows of Bears Ears, your lawmakers need to know that. These tools makes it easy.

Brands for Public Lands is a coalition of outdoor businesses organized by The Conservation Alliance, working together to defend America's public lands and waters through collective advocacy. The coalition stands behind Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, Tongass National Forest, Bristol Bay, and other landscapes threatened by mining, drilling, or other industrial development.

The coalition's model is straightforward: the outdoor industry has more collective influence than any individual brand, and using that influence on behalf of the places the industry depends on is both a responsibility and a strategic necessity. Public lands drive outdoor recreation. Outdoor recreation drives the outdoor economy. The outdoor economy drives everything else.

Outdoor Tech joined Brands for Public Lands because we believe brands have an obligation to stand behind the places their products were built for. That obligation doesn't end when a sale closes.

— Learn more and join: conservationalliance.com/brands-for-public-lands

— Sign the petition: app.oneclickpolitics.com/campaign-page?cid=6NLK5gEz468wpwt5YKS1a&lang=en

— Follow the campaign: @conservationalliance

Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante are more than policy debates. They are places people go to be outside. Places families have explored, athletes have trained, and communities have relied on for recreation, tourism, and economic stability. They are ancestral homelands stewarded by Tribal Nations who fought for their protection and deserve to see that protection honored.

We signed the letter. We're asking you to add your voice. And we'll keep showing up for these places for as long as it takes.

#GoForthAndPlay #ProtectThePlacesWePlay #BearsEars #GrandStaircaseEscalante #BrandsForPublicLands #OutdoorTech

Outdoor Tech is a proud member of The Conservation Alliance and Brands for Public Lands. A portion of every purchase at outdoortechnology.com supports conservation wor