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The purpose of this paper is to explore issues that American rangeland professionals regard as most important in supporting sustainable rangeland systems. Impetus for this work is provided by the pending International Year for Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP), to be celebrated in 2026. One of the goals of the IYRP 2026 is to raise awareness about the challenges facing global rangelands. The American situation described here provides one example we can learn from. The objectives of this work include: (1) Summarizing recent findings from surveys and workshops conducted during 2022 to 2024 where the participants —largely members of the Society for Range Management (SRM) —ranked priority rangeland problems to be tackled; (2) reviewing historical and current aspects of policy environments that affect contemporary problem-solving on American rangelands; and (3) clarifying how progress in policy-related problem solving could be linked to the IYRP 2026. Findings are summarized as follows: (1) American range professionals see loss of rangeland systems as the key challenge, and interventions are needed to preserve open spaces and support new generations of resource users; (2) improved policy making and stakeholder collaborative processes are the main interventions to ad dress these key challenges; (3) recent policy opportunities abound at local, state, and federal levels that could promote sustainable rangeland systems, but how best to engage policy making and document impacts remains somewhat of an enigma; and (4) in the context of action planning for IYRP 2026, it is proposed that a process of generating political proclamations that underscore the multiple values of rangelands to society are a useful first step that can better connect SRM sections to local and state-level political entities.