The National Park Service is trying to dramatically change how it has successfully managed public recreation areas in the San Francisco Bay Area for more than 40 years. It’s planning to turn the majority of open space in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) into controlled zones, where visitor access and activities will be highly restricted. There is no credible reason, scientific or otherwise, to start denying access to this public land, where people, plants, birds and wildlife have peacefully coexisted for decades.

In 1972, the people of the Bay Area were promised access when Congress created the GGNRA that now comprises 80,000 acres across San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo Counties. The GGNRA was created to address the extreme need for recreational open space in the densely populated Bay Area. This area is not remote, pristine wilderness like Yosemite or Yellowstone, yet the National Park Service wrongly says it should be managed in the same way.

The proposed general management policy will deny significant public use for longstanding activities like hiking, surfing, bike riding, horseback riding, and dog walking in popular places like Ocean Beach, Fort Funston, Muir Beach, Marin Headlands, and the recently acquired Rancho Corral de Tierra at the tip of Half Moon Bay. Erecting fences, barriers and compliance signs to foil – and ticket – "trespassers" who cause no harm on land that belongs to all of us achieves no good outcome.

We urge you to keep the Golden Gate National Recreation Area open for people and for recreation, as it has been for decades.