BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. - President Obama kicked off America's Great Outdoors Initiative earlier this year in an attempt to help Americans take better advantage of urban and rural outdoor spaces. A conference in Breckenridge next week aims to help parks leaders from around the nation figure out how to implement the recommendations in the report.
The leaders are coming to Colorado in part because the state offers some innovative ways to integrate the outdoors into everyday life. Scott Babcock, Colorado State Parks' strategic planning manager, will share his knowledge at the conference and says the evidence of Colorado's impact extends beyond federal parks, forests and Bureau of Land Management land.
"Colorado is ahead of the game in many ways in terms of outdoor recreation and connecting local citizenry to the outdoors: Local county open space areas, local trail connections between counties."
The state has strong municipal park systems as well, Babcock says, and a good deal of funding for parks comes from dedicated sources such as the Colorado Lottery, the GoCo project, and the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund.
Some lawmakers have called for cutting national or local funding to parks, saying that in a time of budget shortfalls, parks aren't an economic need. Babcock says the opposite is true: Parks and outdoor recreation contribute $730 billion to state and local economies nationwide, including about $15 billion in Colorado alone.
"A recent study by the National Recreation and Parks Association indicates that for every $1 million invested in parks and recreation infrastructure, at least 20 jobs are created."
Dr. Glenn Haas, a planning consultant with the National Association of Recreation Resource Planners who is the co-organizer of the Breckenridge conference, agrees.
"There's many, many things we can do, many best practices that don't cost a dime. It just takes a little passion, a little conviction and a little redirection."
Haas says they'll be engaging in those best practices at the conference: collaborating with stakeholders from both government and private industry to share ideas, resources and plans to help realize the goals of the America's Great Outdoors Initiative.
Conference organizers are giving achievement awards to White House Council on Environmental Quality chairperson Nancy Sutley and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar for their leadership of the Great Outdoors Initiative and support for Land and Water Conservation funding.
The conference will be held next Monday through Thursday at the Beaver Run Conference Center. Chair Sutley will give the keynot address at Thursday's luncheon. The conference website is at narrp.org.
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Crews have been ramping up wildfire resilience projects to thin out brush and dead wood in California's giant sequoia groves, clearing twice as many acres in 2023 compared with 2022.
The Giant Sequoia Lands Coalition is trying to avoid a repeat of the disastrous mega-fires of 2020 and 2021 - which killed about 20% of large mature trees in their native Sierra Nevada range.
Joanna Nelson, Ph.D. is the director of science and conservation planning with the nonprofit Save the Redwoods League.
"We remove fuel," said Nelson, "we get to a safe place to do prescribed burning and to do cultural burning - which is always led by Indigenous people, which is another practice of taking care of the forest and reducing wildfire risk."
Sequoia National Park is just one part of California's giant sequoia groves, which stretch over 26,000 acres.
A new report shows that in 2023, the program treated nearly 9,900 acres in 28 groves - and more than 14,000 since 2021.
Crews have also planted 542,000 native tree seedlings in severely burned areas over the past two years.
Nelson said the groves must be re-treated about every 8 to 10 years.
"The cost of inaction is loss of giant sequoias in their native range," said Nelson. "And big fires that spread because of the fuel continuity. We risk further loss of trees that are anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 years old if we do nothing."
The groves have built up quite a bit of dead wood fuel because, until the last few decades, it had been national policy to suppress almost all fire - which led to intense firestorms that incinerated entire groves of old-growth trees.
It is now understood that judicious use of fire can clear out the understory and be beneficial to the forest.
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The Bureau of Land Management has proposed expanding the public land available for solar power production in 11 states, including Montana.
The BLM's Western Solar Plan builds on a version first released in 2012 and focuses on harnessing the potential in Western and Plains states most amenable to solar production.
Nick Fitzmaurice, energy transition engineer for the Montana Environmental Information Center, said the expanded plan reflects the country's growing demand for solar energy.
"It's projected that 700,000 acres of solar development are going to be needed to meet future clean goals, and in the range of about 5,000 of those acres are going to be in Montana," Fitzmaurice explained. "It's a small part of the picture but important that all our open land that is able to contribute to solar can do so."
The Wilderness Society released a statement supporting the proposed Western Solar Plan expansion. The BLM is taking public comment on it until April 18.
The BLM has already done an environmental impact statement, which can sometimes be a stumbling block for such projects.
Fitzmaurice pointed out Montana was not part of the first Western Solar Plan. He thinks adding the state and having the BLM involved in siting the facilities will be crucial as Montana takes advantage of its alternative energy opportunities.
"It's really important that BLM gets ahead of this," Fitzmaurice asserted. "As these applications for development come in, they are able to be sited and put in locations that will minimize the impact on this important public land resource that we have."
Fitzmaurice added the plan proposes solar facilities be built near existing power transmission lines but not near culturally sensitive areas of Montana. Critics of the proposal said additional solar development could threaten wildlife species and habitat.
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The remote landscape of southeastern Oregon is receiving additional protections.
The Bureau of Land Management has finalized its resource management plan for the southeast corner of the state and it includes protections for parts of the Owyhee and Malheur Rivers and canyon lands in the region.
Michael O'Casey, deputy director of forest policy and Northwest programs for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, said it's an exciting announcement, which will protect sensitive landscape from activities like surface development and road building.
"When that landscape is impacted, it's really hard to bring it back and restore it," O'Casey pointed out. "And so, it's really important to protect the places out there that are healthy and intact and resistant. And resilience is a term that we use, to stresses from climate change or whatever else."
O'Casey noted the plan still allows for traditional uses of the land like hunting and fishing. The BLM's final resource management plan for the district covers four-point-six million acres of public land.
O'Casey stressed the agency deliberated for years on this decision.
"This planning process was initiated in 2010 and so it's been 14 years in the making," O'Casey emphasized. "The good news is that, even though it's been a really long time, was that there was a really robust public comment process throughout this."
O'Casey added appointing the Southeast Oregon Resource Advisory Council in 2014 was an important part of public involvement. The council was made up of a wide variety of area people including grazing, energy and conservation interests, who made recommendations for management in the region.
Support for this reporting was provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts.
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