Recreation

A piece of legislation that seeks to improve access to public lands and address a number of other recreation issues has been unanimously voted out of a U.S. House committee. That bodes well for ultimate passage, as a similar bill has already cleared the same hurdle in the Senate.

Legislation to improve access to public lands and address issues related to rising usage has been introduced in the U.S. House.

The Bureau of Land Management is hoping to implement what it calls the Blueprint for 21st Century Recreation, and a new report identifies ways to achieve those goals.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis released data that shows that the outdoor recreation economy was worth some $564 billion in 2022, or 2.2 percent of the country’s GDP.

The Bureau of Land Management has outlined its plan to manage recreation on the roughly 245 million acres of public lands that it oversees. It includes what the agency calls “several major shifts” in its policies. Among the changes contemplated are expanding the use of fee collection technologies, diversifying BLM staff and taking steps to make public lands more accessible to underserved communities.

Headwaters Economics recently released an updated analysis of federal data on the economic impact of the recreation economy, whose scale rivals or exceeds that of many sectors that get a lot more attention, like car manufacturing and air transportation. Those impacts are on the whole even more significant in much of the West.

Cecil D, Andrus, the logger who rose to become Idaho’s only four-term governor and ultimately engineered the conservation of millions of acres, would have been more than a bit interested in participating in an April 18, 2023 conversation

The addition has more than quadrupled the size of the Marquez Wildlife Area and re-established tribal access to religious sites in the area.

The Interior Department announced the distribution of $279 million to outdoor recreation and conservation projects across the U.S., with tens of millions of dollars going to states in the Mountain West.

Visitors have flocked to Western communities during the pandemic to soak in the region’s public lands. But how many visitors? While the National Park Service closely monitors visitation, national forests and the Bureau of Land Management lack an efficient and cost-effective way to measure foot traffic.