Implementing the Great American Outdoors Act in the Era of Sustainable Recreation: Time for a Mission 2030?

The Great American Outdoors Act (AGOA) fully and permanently funds the Land and Water Conservation Fund for the first time since it was created in 1964. This is a boon for purchasing conservation lands, but equally important, the act provides funding to address massive federal agency recreation infrastructure backlogs. The last major overhaul of the U.S. parks and outdoor recreation system was over 50 years ago, during the era of Mission 66 and related programs. Since that time, a host of environmental and societal changes necessitates new approaches for updating conservation and recreation opportunities. In addition to acquiring critical park and conservation lands, and developing and updating facilities, new park and recreation goals include increasing public use and visitor diversity and advancing environmental justice, public health, and large-scale conservation goals. Integrated systems analyses are needed to address these diverse concerns across landscapes, regions, and jurisdictions, and new interagency and interdisciplinary approaches will be needed. This is a bureaucratic crossroads: for the first time in decades we can truly advance public access, human health, and social equity values of public lands; the GAOA is a critical process step toward, but not the culmination of, this goal.

A Review of Trends and Knowledge Gaps in Latinx Outdoor Recreation on Federal and State Public Lands

The Latinx population in the United States, estimated to compose 28% of the country’s population by 2050, has a long history of public land use. Yet while research on Latinx outdoor recreation in urban green spaces has increased over the past 20 years, research on Latinx outdoor recreation on federal and state public lands has waned. This study synthesizes the literature on public land use and outdoor recreation on federal and state public lands by the Latinx population in the United States to assess the state of knowledge and to strategically identify research needs in Latinx public land use and outdoor recreation. Our analysis reveals that while institutional barriers such as policies, practices, and procedures that favor some ethnic groups over others continue to exist, barriers to access, such as distance to sites, available free time, and knowledge about how to use public lands may be shifting, offering clues that may help guide informed approaches to outdoor recreation management.

Developing a Capacity Building, Operational Model of a Sustainable Recreation Program

Integrating sustainability concepts, tools, and best practices across the outdoor recreation and park profession has gained momentum over the past three decades. However, missing from the professional and scientific literature have been action-oriented and evaluative research focused on “how” sustainability is being operationalized in the field. Through a qualitative research design focused on the 11 National Forests of the Southwestern Region of the USDA Forest Service, we developed an operational model for how sustainable recreation is being implemented at the Forest level through the Sustainable Recreation Strategy. Data collection included document analysis, stakeholder interviews, and personal observation. Document analysis included a content analysis methodology of 11 Forest-level Sustainable Recreation Action Plans, the principal planning process used to implement the vision and goals set forth by the Regional Sustainable Recreation Strategy. Evidence from the study was used to develop a grounded operational model with three foundational areas of Program, Agency, and Community. Foundational areas were further elaborated into component areas—Program into workforce, communications, outdoor recreation management, financial management, and information management systems—Agency into leadership support, administrative support, and integrated resource management—and Community into partnerships, volunteer program, and conservation education. Operational models such as this can help recreation managers, agency leaders, and policymakers adjust systems, structures, and roles to build program capacity and accelerate program transition towards sustainability.

Coordinating and Standardizing Outdoor Recreation Supply and Demand Databases to Facilitate Management and Promote Conservation, Health, and Accessibility

Recreation opportunities exist as a system at multiple scales and are offered by a variety of recreation providers sometimes with different goals and objectives. Incremental and disparate planning across providers can lead to mismatched supply and demand and inefficient use of resources. Furthermore, traditional recreation supply and demand studies have not systematically considered compatible benefits from conserving recreation lands including demand for and provision of biodiversity and wildlife conservation, ecosystem services, human health, and environmental justice issues.Historically, the supply of outdoor recreation and conservation lands was assembled by different state and federal agencies, counties and municipalities, Native American tribes, non-governmental organizations, or private organizations for the lands they directly managed with little systematic coordination. A national level Protected Area Databased (PAD-US) developed by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Gap Analysis Project is changing this. It is the official, publicly available, and comprehensive spatial inventory of every park and protected area in the US. The PAD-US program has developed a standardized data set with consistent protocols and methodologies for data collection for continuous updates.Demand assessments are currently conducted by various federal and state agencies, industry associations, and academics. These studies are independently conducted at various levels form recreation site, across land ownership, by activity, or state and national studies. Initiated in 1960, what became the National Survey of Recreation and the Environment (NSRE) collected recreation demand data for analysis at state and national levels. Many recreation planners used this data until it was discontinued in 2014. While there has been coordination and systemization and standardization of recreation supply data collection, no similar actions have occurred for demand.Following the PAD-US, we identify opportunities to coordinate, standardize, and systematize the collection of demand data across agencies, ownerships, and scales. We propose a parallel publicly available National Recreation Demand Database (NRDD) with consistent protocols and methodologies to be the comprehensive and authoritative inventory of recreation demand. We suggest that a new National Survey on People and the Environment (NSPE) be developed to replace the NSRE to collect improved data on outdoor recreation, other resource uses, and compatible benefit demand information.

Bold Moves for Visitor Use Management: Public Health, Public Engagement and Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

Public land management is inherently complex and requires a systems approach that integrates ecological, economic, and social values. Currently, there are few tools and examples available for federal land management planning that use a systems approach. Issues are often approached from a disciplinary perspective, and outdoor recreation problems, assumptions, and solutions often focus too narrowly on how to mitigate recreation impacts as opposed to understanding the broader role of visitor use and access, public engagement, and public health in sustainable land management. The Visitor Use Management Framework (the Framework), developed by the Interagency Visitor Use Management Council (IVUMC, 2016) provides interagency guidance for managing public use on federal lands and waters. The Framework uses a process that can be incorporated into existing agency planning and decision making. It follows all of the Council agencies’ (NPS, BLM, USFS, USFWS, ACoE, NOAA) planning principles and illustrates how to specifically address visitor experiences and resource protection with an integrated planning approach. This research note explores the evolving role of the Framework in sustainable recreation management and how public health, public engagement, and representation, inclusion, and access can be incorporated throughout the Framework to ensure planning decisions meet the needs, values, and preferences of diverse user groups. Further, this paper invites a broader discussion around next steps for boldly moving to integrate public health, public engagement, and representation, inclusion, and access more fully into all aspects of visitor use management, including the Framework. Collective effort and ongoing innovation is needed to ensure that the Framework is thoughtfully implemented in ways that provide opportunities to enhance outdoor recreation access and inclusion for a broader range of people.

A People’s Future of Leisure Studies: Political Cultural Black Outdoors Experiences

Public lands and the outdoor opportunities they afford are imbued with a long history of cultural and political contestations between the White settler colonial regime, Black and Native Americans. These contestations are grounded in starkly different values and beliefs systems pertaining to the landscape and human-nature relations. Despite the contestations, whiteness continues to dominate the narratives about public lands and its institutions. Furthermore, the ideology of wilderness - as a place of refuge, the antidote to urban living – remains the main frame of reference to explore outdoor experiences. Thus, as researchers continue to espouse this ideology of wilderness, they effectively suppress the experiences and values that African Americans and other people of color hold towards nature and historically shaped by their social and political realities. The history of slavery, post-slavery and Black dispossession, have conjured up innovative Black diasporic cultural practices of resistance, survival and self-determination. Through hidden outdoor spaces they have forged a culture of resistance, built social structures centered on African traditional practices, and engaged in alternative modes of environmental stewardship. The Black outdoors culture today have roots in this robust legacy of resistance and political struggle for self-determination and provide inspiration for outdoor recreation and environmental education programs that culturally and politically relevant to African Americans. In this paper we engage in an investigation on Black peoples’ political outlook of the outdoors and/or their political outlook on engagement with those spaces both historically and presently. In doing so, we first call attention to the need to critically examine diversity practices designed to accommodate a multi-cultural society and how they contribute to a cultural hegemony. We also review the history of research on outdoor experiences putting into sharper relief the Euro-centric values that dominate the analysis and maintain the cultural power of white racial identities. Finally, pulling from African American literary works, we propose Black-centered interpretations of nature centered on their cultural worldviews and political resistance against hegemonic models of dispossession, abstraction and commodification. The aim here is to advocate for the co-existence of multiple cultural imaginaries of nature defined by the social and political realities of different racialized people, thus responding to the call for different paradigms of outdoor recreation highlighted in this special issue.

Physical Activity Experiences of People with Multiple Sclerosis during the COVID-19 Pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic, government and health officials introduced measures such as social distancing and facility closures that amplified barriers to physical activity. Certain groups, including people with multiple sclerosis (MS), have been underserved during the pandemic. In this qualitative study we aimed to: (1) explore the physical activity experiences of people with MS during the COVID-19 pandemic; (2) identify the facilitators and barriers to physical activity during COVID-19 for people with MS; and (3) make recommendations for inclusive physical activity policy and programming. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 11 adults (9 women) with MS during January and February 2021. Following an inductive thematic analysis, three themes were developed: (1) changing opportunities and adapting to new opportunities; (2) social isolation and physical activity; and (3) adapting physical activity to stay safe from COVID-19. Common facilitators identified included having knowledge and resources to adapt activities, social connections, and access to outdoor recreation opportunities. Identified barriers included fear and anxiety related to the spread of the virus, a loss of in-person activity options, and the closure of physical activity spaces. Online and at-home opportunities for physical activity were a valued and accessible way to address barriers to physical activity for people with MS, and should be maintained post-pandemic while considering flexibility to accommodate variable support needs.

Reconnecting Youth to Nature: A Camp on Campus Model

Day camps are a powerful context for youth development. The American Camp Association and Leave No Trace have been integral in supporting youth development by identifying outcomes associated with participation in outdoor recreation. Recreation majors in the programming class used the camp as a service-learning component of the class that offered them valuable hands-on experience in program design, program facilitation, working with youth, and program evaluation. Therefore, this study evaluated the impact of camp on identified youth outcomes. The outdoor recreation camp was a partnership from a private school and local university. The Youth Outcomes Battery provided measures that focus on common outcomes (e.g., affinity for nature). Thirty-one of the 32 campers completed the retrospective questionnaire. The sample was 61% female, with an average age of 9 years. On a scale of 1 to 10, campers scored a 9.32 on Level of Enjoyment. Findings show that over 50% of the campers learned “a little” or “a lot” about the desired outcomes (e.g., affinity for nature). This work provides an example of an evidence-based nature camp.

Integrating Ecosystem Services Into Water Resource Management: An Indicator-Based Approach

Natural ecosystems are fundamental to local water cycles and the water ecosystem services that humans enjoy, such as water provision, outdoor recreation, and flood protection. However, integrating ecosystem services into water resources management requires that they be acknowledged, quantified, and communicated to decision-makers. We present an indicator framework that incorporates the supply of, and demand for, water ecosystem services. This provides an initial diagnostic for water resource managers and a mechanism for evaluating tradeoffs through future scenarios. Building on a risk assessment framework, we present a three-tiered indicator for measuring where demand exceeds the supply of services, addressing the scope (spatial extent), frequency, and amplitude for which objectives (service delivery) are not met. The Ecosystem Service Indicator is measured on a 0–100 scale, which encompasses none to total service delivery. We demonstrate the framework and its applicability to a variety of services and data sources (e.g., monitoring stations, statistical yearbooks, modeled datasets) from case studies in China and Southeast Asia. We evaluate the sensitivity of the indicator scores to varying levels data and three methods of calculation using a simulated test dataset. Our indicator framework is conceptually simple, robust, and flexible enough to offer a starting point for decision-makers and to accommodate the evolution and expansion of tools, models and data sources used to measure and evaluate the value of water ecosystem services.