About Winter Wildlands Alliance
Winter Wildlands Alliance is a national nonprofit organization working to inspire and empower people to protect America’s wild snowscapes. We are an alliance of over 100 grassroots environmental organizations and backcountry partners. Our SnowSchool program engages over 33,000 kids in science-based field trips and education across 60 sites nationwide. Our Backcountry Film Festival, premiering every winter in Boise, Idaho, tours more than 100 locations worldwide and raises more than $200,000 each tour season for local mountain communities.
Our Mission
Our Vision
A powerful and diverse Alliance of winter recreationists protecting and stewarding America’s wild snowscapes to ensure thriving ecosystems, natural soundscapes, climate resilience, and the long-range sustainability of public-access human-powered recreation.
Our Story
Formed in 2000, Winter Wildlands Alliance grew out of the recognition that skiers, snowshoers, snowboarders, winter mountaineers and other backcountry adventurers needed a collective voice advocating on issues that impact the winter backcountry. Our work is equally focused on places as on the experiences these places provide; we pursue it in our local backcountry, at the offices and headquarters of our public land managers, and in the halls of Congress. The landscape of winter recreation has changed radically since we started—with more people than ever seeking the backcountry experience— and our work is more relevant now than ever.
We accomplish our work through a variety of means. We advocate on national issues and maintain a national presence by working regularly with Forest Service, National Park Service, and elected officials, commenting on land management plans and encouraging agencies to adopt policies that support quality human-powered recreation experiences. Winter Wildlands Alliance also supports a network of grassroots groups, helping local users to connect and to influence the issues affecting their favorite backcountry areas. With boots on the ground, we give back to the land through our stewardship programs, and get 33,000 kids outside each year to experience the joy of winter through SnowSchool.
Since 2005, the Winter Wildlands Alliance Backcountry Film Festival has celebrated the human-powered winter experience. The Festival now tours each winter to more than 100 locations across the world and raises funds and awareness for local groups working on advocacy, snow safety and outdoor education programs.
Successes & Leadership
- Working with four coalition partners, WWA’s 14-year campaign to protect Yellowstone National Park resulted in a long-term winter use plan that eliminated the noisiest, most polluting vehicles, put a reasonable cap on total over-snow vehicle use and led to a remarkable recovery for the unique winter ecosystem, wildlife and visitor enjoyment in our nation’s first national park and most iconic winter sanctuary.
- In 2015, the Forest Service finalized a new rule, the Over-Snow Vehicle Rule, which requires relevant National Forests to designate routes and areas where over-snow vehicles are allowed and prohibits winter motorized travel in places that are not specifically designated and shown on a map as open. This new rule is the direct result of our efforts to get the Forest Service to manage snowmobiles under the same guidelines used for all other off-road vehicles on national forest lands. As skiers, splitboarders, snowshoers and others who value quiet winter wildlands we see the over-snow vehicle rule as an opportunity to bring balance to the backcountry and to help protect places that are valued for human-powered winter recreation. In 2022, we celebrated publication of the first of these winter travel plans – on the Stanislaus and Lassen National Forests.
- WWA is founding member of the Outdoor Alliance. The ten membership organizations of Outdoor Alliance have a long tradition of protecting public lands, waters and snowscapes while preserving public access to America’s Outdoors to ensure there are trails to ride, rivers to paddle, peaks to ski and crags to climb.
- Working with local partners, WWA has helped protect more than three million acres of public lands for human-powered activities and for the irreplaceable natural resource values these places provide. This includes protecting Idaho’s Centennial Mountains from heli-skiing (2021), stopping a ski resort expansion onto beloved backcountry terrain in the Lake Superior highlands (2023), and protecting hundreds of thousands of acres of wildlands across the West through forest planning (such as in the 2022 Custer Gallatin Forest Plan).
- WWA has created groundbreaking land management resources such as synthesizing the best available science related to winter recreation, our Winter Recreation on Western National Forest Lands Report and the Winter Trails and Backcountry Use Economic Impact Analysis for the Teton Region.
Our Values
- Conservation: Together we have a collective responsibility—for the sake of climate resilience, biodiversity, and sustainable human-powered recreation, retreat and spiritual connection—to protect America’s remaining wild snowscapes from unfettered commercial development, privatization, extractive industry, unmanaged and unsustainable recreation, habitat fragmentation, light and noise pollution, and other significant human impacts.
- Stewardship: We who visit, travel through and/or recreate on public lands have a responsibility to minimize our impacts to wildlife, natural resources and other people, to welcome and mentor newcomers, to engage in public process, and to steward these places for future generations.
- Equity & Inclusivity: We believe that all people, regardless of race, color, gender identity, cultural background or socioeconomic status, must have equitable access to the awe, solitude, wildness, clean air, natural soundscapes and other experiences and benefits of unmitigated winter—in ways that do not compromise the opportunities for future generations to experience the same. Equity, diversity, inclusivity and social justice are priority considerations in our organizational structure, staffing and governance, and across all of our program areas.
- Balance: Just as we do our best work and are our best selves when we take care of our physical, emotional and mental well-being, so too must we seek balance in our uses of and impacts to public lands, ecosystems and the future of our planet.
- Kindness: We approach our work, our play, our relationship to others and to the natural environment in a spirit of respect, humility, generosity and gratitude.
