Newsletter
First Thru-Hike
Legislation
Historic First Hike
First Equestrian Ride
FAQs for Travelers
ADT Background
Millennium Trails
Bill & Laurie Foot's
ADT Journals
Stark's Run
Lipton Simple Steps
ADT Ford Adventure
Team
Links & Resources
Contact Us
Site Map
Home

HOW YOU CAN HELP

The National Discovery Trails Act (H.R. 74) has been re-introduced in the House of Representatives. If we can show a groundswell of early support for the bill, it may make a big difference. A key will be to showing strong bipartisan support for the bill is to gather as many co-sponsors as we can. That's where you come in. You can help by asking your member of the House of Representatives to co-sponsor the bill.

Here are three simple ways to approach your member of Congress (MC).

Contact information for your MC is available at: www.house.gov.

If need help at any point, or would like written materials, click to email info@discoverytrail.org or call 800-663-2387.

How to contact your member of Congress:
A personal meeting is the most effective: Call your MC's local office. Ask when he/she will be in the district and ask to schedule an appointment. Bring information to the meeting, and have a brief pitch ready to ask your MC to co-sponsor the National Discovery Trails Act. Click here for a summary about the trail and reasons to support the bill.

The next most effective approach is to fax a letter and follow it up with a phone call. Call the MC's local office or Washington, D.C., office and ask for the name of the legislative aide who deals with resources/environmental/recreation issues. Fax a letter to the aide requesting that the MC sign on as a co-sponsor of the bill. (Do not mail it; mail is slow and unreliable because of the anthrax attacks. If you don't have a fax, there are many office supply stores with fax services.) Follow up the letter with a phone call to tell the aide that you have faxed information on the bill, and ask the aide to bring the bill to the attention of the MC and ask that the MC co-sponsor the bill.

If you like, you can copy, paste, and personalize these sample letters, or feel free to write your own letter with your own personal ideas about why the ADT is important and should be included in the national trails system:

Click here for a sample letter to send if you live in a district or state that the ADT passes through.

Click here for a sample letter to send if you live in a non-ADT state.

Another approach to is go to the member's website and submit a letter. If you go to www.house.gov/writerep it should take you to a page where you can send a letter directly. See above for sample letters. For best results, follow up your submission with a phone call to the relevant aide handling recreation/resources issues.

Back to Legislation