Q&A: ORR’s Turner On Funding And Industry Growth

The Outdoor Recreation Roundtable, a coalition of outdoor recreation trade associations and organizations, including the National Association of RV Parks and Campgrounds and the RV Industry Association, has been extremely busy over the last few years as it continues to navigate unprecedented interest in outdoor recreation driven in part by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

A year after the passing of the Great American Outdoors Act, state and federal agencies are pouring more resources into upgrading infrastructure, adding amenities at parks across the country and more. 

Jessica (Wahl) Turner is the first president of the ORR and has been at the epicenter of policymaking in Washington D.C. as she continues to guide the organization and lobby for even more funding for recreation areas as many are seeing increased user numbers. 

Prior to her work with the ORR, she directed the Outdoor Industry Association’s outdoor recreation portfolio in Washington D.C., where she successfully gained landmark government recognition of outdoor recreation’s contribution to the national Gross Domestic Product as one of America’s leading industry sectors.

Turner began her career at the Department of the Interior where she managed external relations for the Secretary of the Interior, as well as First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! Outside and Let’s Move! in Indian Country initiatives. Turner is also the co-founder and past chair of the Coalition for Outdoor Access, serves on the Board of the American Conservation Coalition, Advisory Council of Oregon State University’s Outdoor Economy Program and has been recognized for her leadership in D.C. and the outdoor industry with Outdoors’ 30 Under 30 and the Hill’s Top Lobbyist.

Turner took time out of her busy schedule to sit down with Woodall’s Campground Magazine to talk about the ORR’s recent priorities, the unprecedented growth in the outdoor hospitality industry and to look at what is coming next. 

Below is an edited version of the conversation. 

WCM: What are some of the priority items that the ORR has been focused on recently? 

Jessica (Wahl) Turner: Recently, we have been working to promote the revival of the Federal Interagency Council on Outdoor Recreation (FICOR), which has been a priority for the ORR since the beginning of the Biden administration. Solidifying this could not have come at a better time to support America’s public lands, waters and the $689 billion outdoor recreation economy.

We are really knee-deep into the implementation of the Great American Outdoors Act, the bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Economic Development Agency money we received from the Recovery Act. All these big chunks of money that have been passed, or these laws that have been passed, over the past couple of years in and around COVID, they are now getting to the streets. They’re hitting the ground and the parks are now seeing the impact.

Making sure they’re implemented in a way that we think has the most impact is important. Making sure the funding is going to rural communities, that it helps people that don’t have access to recreation, supports businesses and fosters new markets for businesses. That’s a huge bucket of work.

There is also another big piece of legislation in Congress right now that has pretty much everything the ORR has wanted for the past eight years. It was packaged up in the Senate. I testified on that last December, and it moved out of the Senate Natural Resources Committee in May. Now we’re working to get the same in the House and we are trying to move it before the end of the year.

We just released a workforce report to look at the depth and breadth of the outdoor recreation economy’s workforce. The careers we have and the opportunities they provide, because what we are finding is people just think outdoor recreation is what they see and what they interface with. That might be a guide or someone selling food at a concession stand at the park, but really, it’s like your job and my job, and finance, biology, research and development, and RV technicians.

We had this amazing RV technician and a marina operator that we did profiles on. We featured an RV technician who didn’t have a college degree, fell into an RV career, got trained up and down for free by the business that he was working with and is now making $ 75,000 a year in Elkhart, Ind., and he doesn’t have any college debt, loves his job and is trying to get the word out to other folks in his community.

We are trying to showcase that and make sure that we’re connecting colleges and institutions to the actual workforce needs that our industry has because there seems to be a gap in those areas traditionally. These are things that drive communities, drive economies and can support families and a great lifestyle. That will just be the beginning of many more efforts on workforce development going forward.

Read the full interview from Woodall's Campground Magazine here.