Why Give?

Your support helps protect the places you can’t live without.

9 out of 10 people who visit the outdoors are uninformed.

With over 13 billion trips into the outdoors in the U.S. every year, people are causing too much preventable damage, and that damage is adding up. You can be on the forefront of changing this troubling trend—the trashed parks and damaged trails, the formidable impacts of fire, polluted waterways and serious wildlife issues.

Now, more than ever, your role is critical. Consider this:

  • Americans pay over $2.1 billion annually to fight fires in parks and forests, 90% of which are caused by humans due to incidents such as campfires left unattended, the burning of debris, or negligently discarded cigarettes.
  • Wildlife in our parks are routinely relocated or euthanized due to conflicts with humans. The National Park Service cites human garbage as the origin of many of these unfortunate and unnecessary conflicts.
  • Grand Canyon National Park has $11 million in trail maintenance needs and more than $5 million in critical trail work is needed at Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Your involvement with Leave No Trace generates solutions to these serious issues, and more. Protecting wildlife, appropriate use of fire, clean water, healthy parks and trails—all a reality when people are learning about and practicing Leave No Trace. Costly and irreversible damage to nature is eliminated or substantially reduced through Leave No Trace education, training, and outreach. We can’t do it without you.

“Leave No Trace is the most simple and honorable concept growing in the outdoor movement today.” Royal Robbins, Climber and Outdoor Pioneer

Benefits beyond the mission.

A membership to Leave No Trace comes with benefits beyond the mission too! Receive discounts on your favorite outdoor gear, get the best ways to practice Leave No Trace delivered to your inbox, a special gift when you give $50 or more — plus, exclusive swag just for our community of members.

“Prospect Park is awesome — I play baseball there and go on the trails through the woods. It gets pretty trashed up. I learned Leave No Trace at my school and I want to talk to everyone about it so they can help it like I do.”  Noah, 6th Grader from Brooklyn, NY

You can trust us.

Leave No Trace is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization (EIN # 84-1303335) and is a four-star charity on Charity Navigator. This means that when you give to Leave No Trace you are supporting an organization that is “more financially healthy, accountable, and transparent.”

Public lands can’t wait.

Leave No Trace is working every day, doing all we can to protect vulnerable species and habitats.

But we need your support. You can put the outdoors on a path to a healthy and sustainable future with a gift to Leave No Trace — $0.83 of every dollar donated provides direct support for Leave No Trace solutions to the serious issues your favorite outdoor places are facing. You can make a difference.

Donations to Leave No Trace are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law.