2025 Mid-Year Letter from the Coalition Director

Read on for info about how you can win a $200 REI gift card by contributing both financial support and/or trail stories to support our work!

Dear Friends of the Coalition,

When a small group of trails advocates and stewardship partners came together in 2017-2018 to create the Oregon Trails Coalition, we knew Oregon needed a statewide voice for trails, but we could not have imagined the body of work we would undertake together in the first half of 2025! Wow!

Federal Work

Our trails on federal lands (more than 50% of Oregon's land base) have faced threats like never before. Oregon Trails Coalition has been there to rally our members, coordinate federal stewardship partners, and work with our Oregon Congressional delegation. Just in the first half of 2025, we’ve worked to defend our trails against massive federal agency staffing reductions, proposed federal lands sell-offs, and the threat of massive cuts to agency trails budgets.

Oregon Legislative Session

At the same time, 2025 presented us with our biggest state legislative agenda for trails to date. We successfully defended Oregon’s trails and kept them open through our work with many partners to pass lasting recreational immunity protections. We were the leading voice and built a massive coalition around including trails funding in a landmark transportation funding package that ultimately did not pass this session. We advocated for meaningful investments in Oregon’s Signature Trails and for agency funding to keep trails projects on track.

While legislators didn’t reach the consensus necessary to move the transportation package or pass other trails funding measures this session, our work with legislators, trails advocates, and our Move Oregon Forward Coalition partners has helped us build a strong foundation for the work ahead.

A strong Oregon Trails Coalition is more important than ever. 

We won’t mince words. The first half of 2025 has been challenging, and at times, heartbreaking. So many of our valued partner agencies and organizations have faced devastating budget cuts and staff reductions, resulting in the loss of valued colleagues and trails professionals. More than 80% of Oregonians report using their local trails, and we know so many of our fellow trail users are facing increased risk and anxieties as they move though the world based on how their very identities have been criminalized in political policy and rhetoric. 

We all continue to face so much uncertainty.

Oregon Trails Coalitions is committed to continuing the project of bringing all of us together to build a strong, supportive community that celebrates all of our many contributions to this work: to maintain and invest in trails that give us all the freedom we long for to move our bodies in our favorite ways, rest and recharge in nature, get safely to where want to go, connect with our communities, and experience joy and wonder in the outdoors.

If sustaining this work is important to you, become an Oregon Trails Coalition member today. Individual, organizational, and business members power our collective voice for trails with your recurring contributions and one-time donations.

If you can’t contribute financially at this time, please consider contributing a story about the power of investing in the trails in your life.

Everyone who makes a financial contribution or contributes a trails story through our story form by August 31st will be entered to win a $200 gift card to REI generously donated by an Oregon Trails Coalition supporter.

I hope to see many of you at this year’s Summit in Pendleton in November, if not also at a training, webinar, or out on the trail.  

I’m so grateful to do this work with you, and that you’re part of our Oregon Trails Coalition community.

In collaboration,

Steph