The Nature Conservancy. Protecting nature. Preserving life.™

U.S. Capitol building © Jonathon Colman/TNC

An investment in the great outdoors is an investment in America. Healthy land and water are vital to our nation’s strength.

With America losing 3 million acres of land to development each year, the time to act is now. Overdevelopment, pollution and climate change have put America’s lands and waters at greater risk than ever before.

In launching the America’s Great Outdoors initiative, the Obama administration is preserving and strengthening the natural heritage that is so much a part of our national identity, culture and quality of life.

As this program moves forward, The Nature Conservancy is calling on our leaders to make America stronger for current and future generations by creating and sustaining a network of large areas of restored and conserved land, water and coastlines around which Americans can build productive and healthy lives. Join us in supporting the America’s Great Outdoors initiative.

The protection of the Flint Hills tallgrass prairie in eastern Kansas is an example of how private landowners, the federal government and the Conservancy are taking conservation to a new level in the America’s Great Outdoors initiative. As the first conservation area created by the Obama administration, the national wildlife refuge in the Flint Hills will protect more than one million acres of working lands.

The America’s Great Outdoors initiative will protect nature from the grass roots up by encouraging conservation at the community level. In turn, it will help ensure clean water supplies, support jobs in tourism and recreation, preserve working farms and ranches, and protect wildlife for people and nature.

Support America’s Great Outdoors initiative as one of the most important ways to protect land, water and our way of life.