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Friends Group· National Forest

Los Padres ForestWatch

“Protect and restore the Los Padres National Forest and surrounding public lands.”

Home groundSanta Barbara, CA
Founded2004
KindFriends Group
Find themlpfw.org ↗

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Right nowLos Padres National Forest: 850,000-acre oil and gas leasing plan

The origin

How they started

Los Padres ForestWatch guards a specific patch of ground: the Los Padres National Forest and Carrizo Plain along California’s central coast. A handful of advocates started it around a picnic table in 2004, and it has punched well above its size in court. With partners it forced the Forest Service to shelve a plan to lease 52,000 acres for drilling and fracking, helped overturn a federal scheme to open more than a million acres to oil, and won permanent closure of old wells inside Carrizo Plain in 2022.

How they run

Small and lean

We don’t hold a detailed federal filing for this group. Groups this size often file the short form or run below the IRS reporting line, so there’s no budget or crew to show here, and that’s no knock: some of the sharpest local defense in the country runs this way.

Run this group? Claim the page and put your own numbers on it, same day.

Their ground

The places they defend

Leading the fightLos Padres National Forest

Has led opposition to oil drilling in the Los Padres region for two decades and is fighting the plan to reopen 400,000 acres to leasing

Who’s defending it

See every threatened place on one map, and who stands for each.

Where and what
Works onnational forests · public lands · stewardship · education
Federal landsU.S. Forest Service · Bureau of Land Management
Active inCalifornia
Who writes the rules where they work

The California congressional delegation averages 81 of 100 on public lands. See the full scorecard

More groups in California
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Ways in

How to help

GiveGive directly

Direct support, on their own site.

Give on their site ↗Show upVolunteer with them

Find their volunteer door on their own site.

Find it on their site ↗SpeakComment and call

Open comment windows and call scripts for fights like these, ready to send.

Public Lands Action NetworkFollowWatch the map

Every threatened place in the country, tracked, with who stands for each.

Threatened Lands Map

Stand with Los Padres ForestWatch

The mission is theirs. The backing is yours.

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Sources and methodAllies: co-litigation edges derived from the same dockets, same case and same side. Place links: MTJP editorial curation with per-link sources. Org-reported figures are always labeled. Nothing on this page is pay-to-play.