Terms of Participation

We encourage you to participate in the discussion and look forward to reading your ideas. The purpose of these Terms is to explain how we handle the content you submit to this site and our standards of conduct.

On this site, you can comment on our posts and share ideas.

Anyone can view the comments on the site. Your participation in this dialogue is voluntary and no payments or gifts will be made to respondents. Any content you submit is in the public domain and may be reused.

Purpose of Discussion

The purpose of the America’s Great Outdoors dialogue is to hear from you about the places you love, your community’s efforts to protect them, and how we can better support modern-day land conservation efforts happening in communities across the country.

Discussion on this website is based on the following key discussion areas from the AGO report:

Posts from AGO will likely concern these four areas and will generally be open for discussion.

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Standards of Conduct

Our Terms of Participation is intended to support open discussion while ensuring a respectful exchange of ideas. We reserve the option to review your ideas against these Terms before posting publicly, which could result in a delay. We will not edit your ideas or comments, but they will be removed from the site by staff if they include any of the following:

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Off-Topic and Duplicate Posts

To ensure a focused and constructive discussion, our moderators reserve the right to remove comments which are “off topic” or do not address some aspect of the dialogue. Topics that are considered off topic include but are not limited to discussions of policy or program issues not directly addressed by this initiative.

If two or more virtually identical posts appear, the moderator may merge the separate submissions into a single statement of the idea – that way, comments will be kept together.

Questions about these Terms

These Terms of Participation may be amended or modified in the future. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at ago@ios.doi.gov.

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2 comments
  1. Dennis
    Feb 17th, 2011 at 11:37 | #1

    Hello America,

    One of the things that drives me crazy as a hunter and hiker in Montana, is the overgrazing on Forest Service lands. Specifically, the Custer National Forest-Ashland District. I understand that many individual ranchers get permits to run cattle there, but the Forest Service must not have any enforcement people because the amount of cattle trails and shrubbery destroyed is sad. I, personally, have a major problem with private companies using public resources to make private profit, whether its mining or ranching. Does it create jobs? Yes, most likely, but when the minerals or timber has been harvested, what is the public left with? Bare public land…with the monies from such activities going to the hands of the few, rather than for the ‘good of all Americans’ which was the intent of designating lands as public inholdings. I could blather more about this, but my ranting isn’t solving anything, so instead I would offer a suggestion to look into how public resource money is ‘spread’ around. My guess is you’ll find large companies own the majority leases and are exploiting public land for the gain of very few. In my opinion, that isn’t why those lands were set aside. I guess I thought those resources were to be sold and the money would come back to, I don’t know, the general fund or something. The materials would directly help America bring in more money for the government rather than for lining the pockets of private companies that only have thier best interest in mind. Not the lands….

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  2. Katherine Chiu
    Feb 17th, 2011 at 11:19 | #2

    I would like to see more affordable foods in the park. Visitors can purchase lunch, sneaks, etc while enjoying the trip.

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