Sustainable Recreation Research Workshop

Press Release: Workshop ignites interest in the future of outdoor recreation

April 3-5, 2018; Golden, Colorado

In early April, surrounded by the spectacular beauty of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, a diverse, talented, and energetic group came together to shape a positive future for public lands, recreation, and human well-being. Convened jointly by U.S. Forest Service Research and Development and National Forest Systems, the meeting was organized by scientists from the Pacific Northwest Research Station in collaboration with the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, and several universities. The workshop drew nearly 90 participants who work in recreation across federal and state agencies, non-governmental organizations, industry, and other partner organizations. The purpose of the three-day workshop was to chart a course to strengthen sustainable recreation research and management capacity nationally and internationally.

Addressing participants, Carl Lucero, Director of U.S. Forest Service Resource Use Sciences in the Research and Development branch, said that the workshop comes at a critical time. “This is an exciting opportunity, particularly because we have management and research co-creating an agenda,” he said. “Forest Service R&D has a commitment to working with managers to provide tools and decision support to help diversify recreation. We want to respond to an important and growing need.”

Public land management agencies have a pressing need for new and better information about outdoor recreation trends. Social, political, and economic conditions have changed from the previous era when recreation policies and standards of practice were established. The U.S. population is growing and becoming more diverse. Visitation has increased, yet agency capacity to manage recreation has declined. Concerned about equity and access, agencies seek ways to connect diverse communities with the benefits of outdoor experiences.

Those benefits are vast. Outdoor recreation has a far-reaching positive impact across the U.S. and our economy. Outdoor recreation activities accounted for 2 percent of the entire U.S. gross domestic product in 2016. Further, the values individual humans receive from recreation and spending time in natural environments cannot be overestimated.

As Francisco Valenzuela, U.S. Forest Service Director of Recreation, Heritage, and Wilderness for the National Forest System and a key workshop leader stated, “Without public lands, we cannot exist. What would we be without public lands? Something more bleak, more gray, with less freedom, less beauty.”

New research will help recreation agencies and organizations be more strategic in enhancing outdoor experiences and responding to changing needs. Workshop participants discussed topics ripe for new tools, research, and synthesis, including: improving connections to diverse communities, data collection and technology, recreation planning and management, understanding visitor benefits, and the economics of outdoor recreation.

The effort to bring together a community of practice to shape the future of recreation research and management was led by scientists at the Pacific Northwest Research Station. Before convening the workshop, they assessed the information needs of recreation and tourism professionals across a range of organizations. This helped focus topics of discussion at the workshop. Over the three days of the workshop, new relationships formed between science and management communities and with outdoor recreation partners. Land managers, public officials, and recreation organizations shared ideas with researchers and began building the foundation for a strategic agenda to direct future research and identify the need for new applications and approaches for planning, management, and monitoring of recreation use.

Outcomes of the workshop will include a set of working papers on critical topics that inform outdoor recreation and tourism that will be published as a technical report, a community of practice for exchanging information and developing a common language, and a research agenda that expands upon research emphasis areas identified in the workshop to guide research on recreation and tourism in the digital age.

Leslie Weldon, Deputy Chief of the U.S. Forest Service, gave the keynote address at the workshop. She summarized the importance of outdoor recreation to the agency’s mission: “To secure the future of healthy public lands we have to invest in understanding the connection between people and the land. That is our highest aspiration. The future of the land depends on people caring about it.”