Hi Fellow RDs,
I’m Kat Baker, the race director of the Mount Laguna Trail Marathon in San Diego and the executive director of the non-profit Runners for Public Lands. I am writing to share information about how the recent firings at federal public lands agencies may impact your events, and offer you the opportunity to join me and other race directors in signing this letter to Congress.
Runners for Public Lands is organizing all race directors, regardless of where your race is run (road, trail, tribal, federal, state, county, or private land, virtual, etc.), to urge lawmakers to take any and all available actions to reverse the recent firings and prevent additional staff reductions. While we have heard that the some permitting officials have informed race directors that these actions will not impact the permitting of your events in 2025, we believe that ancillary impacts such as facility maintenance, trail conditions, emergency response capabilities, etc., will affect your events as the year progresses and that continued staff and budget reductions will impact permitting and the quality of races in future years.
Here’s what we need you to do:
- CLICK HERE to read the letter to lawmakers, see who else has signed, and add your name.
- Forward this email and the link to sign this letter to your network of race directors and ask them to sign too! We’re counting on you! https://runnersforpubliclands.org/RD-letter-form
- Deadline to sign is Thursday, March 6, 2025
- This form will take only a minute or less to complete.
- For short summaries of this issue and how it may impact your race please refer to RPL’s Blog posts dated February 20, 2025 and March 1, 2025.
- If you have stories to share about how the staff reductions are impacting your events or community please share those here. All testimonials will be kept confidential.
Thank you for joining us in this effort to support our public lands managers and agencies.
Kat
Kathleen Baker
Runners for Public Lands
Executive Director
(she, her)