United Four Wheel Drive Associations
An International Organization

United Adopt-A-Road 4 Conservation Program

United Four Wheel Drive Associations and the U.S. Forest Service have teamed up to promote community involvement in conservation of our National Forests. For many years the Forest Service has had this conservation program in place. It is called the “Adopt-a-road” program. The purpose of the program is to develop a partnership between the Forest Service and local citizens to aid the agency in caring for specific roads, trails, or four wheeling areas. An adopt-a-road event usually involves some type of light maintenance to the adopted road and trash clean-up. In some areas these events occur once a year, while in others they occur 4 or 5 times a year as needed. For many locations, the volunteer efforts of local four wheel drive enthusiasts means the difference between keeping a road open or having it closed. You too can make the difference in your area!

In celebration of the Forest Service 100th anniversary (see http://www.fs.fed.us/centennial/) the agency asked national leaders to make a pledge to conservation for the next 100 years. United pledged to create the United Adopt-a-road 4 Conservation program by providing educational materials on our website to aide four wheel drive clubs, associations, and businesses in adopting a forest road in their neighborhood. The ultimate goal of our pledge at United is to help our members adopt at least one road in every district of every national forest in the country, resulting in the donation of over 100,000 hours of volunteer service a year. Although this program is specifically tailored for the U.S. Forest Service, these materials will be helpful for similar conservation projects held by our members worldwide.

With this program you will find the following information for starting an adopt-aroad program and to help with conducting conservation events. This includes

• Nation-wide listing of all Forest Service ranger districts so you can find a road near you to adopt as your own.
• Adopt-a-road Agreement form to be filled out between your club, association, or business, and the Forest Service, along with complete instructions for filling it out.
• Guide for planning and conducting your adopt-a-road event.
• Schedule of events planned worldwide posted on our United website.
• Sample announcement of your upcoming event so you can attract as much volunteer help as possible.
• Sample press release to announce your event to the local media.
• Sample newspaper article to publicize your event after it has happened so that writing to your local paper is a breeze for you.
• Volunteer sign-in and hour log for your convenience so you can track the amount of time and effort your club, association, or business donates to the community.

Everything you need to successfully conduct an adopt-a-road conservation event is here at the United website.

In celebration of our commitment to conservation for four wheel drive access for generations to come, United has declared the first Saturday in October of each year as a coordinated adopt-a-road event worldwide. We encourage all of our members to start this program if you haven’t already and then schedule at least one adopt-a-road event for the first Saturday in October each year. The first annual event will be held October 1, 2005!