National Energy Foundation

An Overview of Tread Lightly Tread Lightly! is a national nonprofit organization with a mission to promote responsible outdoor recreation through ethics education and stewardship. The organization was launched in 1985 by the US Forest Service, and became a nonprofit organization in 1990. Tread Lightly!'s educational message, along with its training and restoration initiatives are strategically designed to instill an ethic of responsibility in a wide variety of outdoor enthusiasts and the industries that serve them. The program's goal is to balance the needs of the people who enjoy outdoor recreation with our need to maintain a healthy environment. Tread Lightly!'s core focus is on people that use or are affected by motorized and mechanized vehicles. The organization offers unique programs and services to help remedy growing recreation issues. Unique enough, the federal government officially recognizes the organization as a sole-source service provider of education and training on how to be environmentally and socially responsible while using motorized and mechanized vehicles in the outdoors. Tread Lightly! also developed a nationally recognized program called Tread Trainer'. Tread Trainer is a training course designed to produce volunteer instructors of the Tread Lightly! ethic all over the country. Tread Lightly!'s positive message of balancing outdoor ethics with recreation has reached nearly 50 million people through strategically-designed public service announcements for print, radio, television and the web. More than $1 million in ad space is donated each year for these important messages. News coverage involving Tread Lightly! reaches an additional 10 million people per year. The Restoration for Recreation' program was designed to keep the great outdoors beautiful, healthy, and accessible by providing much needed resources for backlogged maintenance, along with critical education and communications initiatives to allow for environmentally sustainable outdoor recreation.