Advocates Eye Lands Package Focused On Recreation

Outdoor recreation boosters are hoping to push through a third major victory in four years: a package of bills aimed at enhancing recreational and commercial access to federal sites.

Proposals being considered in the Senate would streamline permitting requirements, extend recreational seasons, and even ease the fees charged to filmmakers and photographers using public lands.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee recently held a hearing on nine pieces of legislation, winning endorsements from both the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, as well as both Democratic and GOP lawmakers on the panel (E&E Daily, Dec. 3, 2021).

"It’s a divisive Congress," acknowledged Outdoor Recreation Roundtable President Jessica Turner. "That’s where recreation comes in."

Turner, who testified before ENR urging swift passage of the nine bills, told E&E News that the recreation bills can draw bipartisan support, especially as the pandemic continues to rage and interest in outdoor recreation and public lands continues to spike.

Congress has demonstrated an ability to move public lands bills on a bipartisan basis, she noted, pointing to the adoption of a permanent reauthorization for the Land and Water Conservation Fund in 2019, followed by the Great American Outdoors Act in 2020, which ensured permanent funding for the popular conservation program and provided funds to address a maintenance backlog in the National Park Service and other land management agencies.

Addressing how to improve outdoor recreation opportunities on federal lands is the next step, argued Turner, whose umbrella group includes outdoor trade associations and represents thousands of recreational business.

"We’re looking at policy and management tweaks," Turner said. "A lot of these things are things that we just have outdated, antiquated agency policies for how to manage recreation. It wasn’t the No. 1 use of the land, and it wasn’t the No. 1 economic generator back 20, 30, maybe even 100 years ago when these policies were created."

Read the full article from E&E News here.