The PRRA is a set of rules regarding fossil collecting on federal lands.

A sister project of The FOSSIL Project, iDigBio is hosting a webinar focused on the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act, featuring Dr. Scott Foss who is the Senior Paleontologist at the Bureau of Land Management. The webinar is scheduled for Thursday, 19 January, 3:00 p.m. EST, 2:00 p.m. CST.

For information regarding the webinar, login instructions, and instructions for commenting on the Department of Interior's proposed regulations, see: https://www.idigbio.org/content/webinar-paleontological-resources-preservation-act-2009-prpa.

The PRPA covers rules of fossil collecting on these types of property:
Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
Bureau of Reclamation
Fish & Wildlife Service
National Park Service
National Forest Service (see below)

Said very simply, on Federal lands, one must have a permit, proper training to collect, and fossils must be placed in an "approved repository", normally a museum.  Fossils will remain the property of the federal government.  The Bureaus will be required to manage, protect, inventory, and monitor the collecting and use of these fossils.

There are separate rules for "casual collecting", which would never impact BPS field trips due to their generous scope.

Alabama has very little federal land, and it is not in areas that would normally contain fossils.  However, other states are very different.  In the west, thousands upon thousands of acres are federal land, and this rule would be of major impact to those states.  For example, individuals cannot collect vertebrate fossils (like dinosaur bones).  Also, since the weight limit is 25 pounds per person per day, not to exceed 100 pounds in a year, just one large dino bone or per-mineralized tree limb would exceed the weight limit.  Another rule that would not affect BPS (but would affect many other groups) is that fossils can only be collected for non-commercial personal use.

Any group working with and adhering to the guidance of professional paleontologists (as BPS does) is probably following these rules already.

This link is to a short PRRA fact sheet from the BLM, clicking link will automatically download a pdf file:
https://www.blm.gov/sites/blm.gov/files/programs_paleontology_quicklinks_PRPA%20fact%20sheet.pdf

US Department of Agriculture/ Forest Service has a different, but similar, set of rules found here: https://www.fs.fed.us/geology/fossils.html

This link is to the full PRRA wording of the rule on the Federal Register/The Daily Jornal of the US Government:
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/12/07/2016-29244/paleontological-resources-preservation