Responsible Recreation
By Emma Athena
“Can we go outside? That’s a loaded question,” Katie Boué, founder of the Outdoor Advocacy Project, said from her backyard the morning of May 21, just a few hours after the launch of the national Recreate Responsibly Coalition—an educational project she helped shepherd with the Outdoor Industry Association, REI, Outdoor Alliance, among others. Boué’s best answer? “It depends,” she said, adding, “It’s a double-edged sword because it’s good to be outside, but there are still lines and boundaries you can cross so quickly.”
Exactly where those boundaries are—where it’s okay to recreate, what forms of recreation are okay to do, which lines are okay to cross, and when it’s okay to cross them—has been a matter of debate among the outdoor community, as well as land managers and public officials, since mid-March. There hasn’t been a central authority delivering clear directives on outdoor recreation, so guidelines were issued piecemeal—state by state, county by county, different rules and regulations sprouting up anywhere you looked.
Some states closed national and regional parks to help curb the disease and keep employees safe; others kept parks open with limited amenities access in order to provide physical and mental relief in these trying times. In some areas, outdoor spaces have been free from humans for nearly two months, while others have seen above-average activity levels.
Now that the tide is turning and restrictions on outdoor recreation are being slowly rolled back across the nation, the debate continues. “How do we reopen and encourage people to get out there?” Boué asks.
Finding answers has been increasingly tricky without guidance from the Department of the Interior. While the Department has provided news briefs on how different public lands will be reopened in phases—mostly with reduced staff, limited amenities, and restrictions on certain areas that will lessen over time—there has been no information on how to access, recreate, and act responsibly in these public lands.
This dilemma is particularly concerning to Estee Rivera, executive director of Rocky Mountain Conservancy, who anticipates many challenges in trying to aid first-time Rocky Mountain National Park visitors without the ability to operate the nature centers, field tours, and outdoor education normally provided. “How do we impart conservation values on them without being able to be there with them in person?” she wonders. “The messaging people are getting is so variable.”
In the absence of a central authority and clear directives, a grassroots movement has stirred within the outdoor industry. Nonprofit coalitions have formed, sports-based advocacy groups have pivoted their outreach, environmental conservancies are getting ever more creative with education and fundraising, and community organizations are adopting new public health information roles. “This is a huge opportunity to shift the way we get outside forever,” Boué said.
Despite the virus’s calamity, Mindy Riesenberg, director of marketing and communications at Grand Canyon Conservancy (GCC), believes 2020 offers a prime opportunity to pause and talk about protecting and preserving national parks. “People are more attuned to making sure things stay as they are for future people,” she says.
Combining the current surge of interest in outdoor recreation—Georgia, for example, has seen twice as many guests visiting state parks on recent weekends, according to a spokesperson—with reduced numbers of park employees and rangers plus multi-billion-dollar park-maintenance backlogs has placed education at the forefront of the nonprofit organizations stepping up to help during this tumultuous transition. The Access Fund, Surfrider Foundation, People for Bikes, Discover Boating, International Mountain Biking Association, and many more advocacy groups have all published sports-specific guidelines intended to educate their respective audiences on proper behavior no matter where they are. Community-based groups like Outdoor Afro, Latino Outdoors, and Native Women’s Wilderness have been sharing policy updates and public health information across their social media channels. Still, many general outdoors users and those looking for activities to do in nature while urban attractions are still closed rely on on-site educational services like park employees or visitor centers, which will likely not be available for weeks or months to come. “The need for us to support the park is even greater than before,” Rivera said.
Like RMC, GCC has stepped up to help educate potential visitors about new recreation guidelines. Through its robust social media reach, which extends around the world and includes nearly half a million people across multiple platforms and mailing lists, GCC has adapted its educational measures. Normally this time of year, GCC would push digital campaigns highlighting its “Hike Smart” program, which educates Grand Canyon visitors on safe hiking measures (like carrying enough water and salty snacks into the hot belly of the canyon). Now, however, GGC is applying its “Hike Smart” philosophy to hikes all over the country and sending out more general information. “Wherever you live, you can go to that park and be respectful when you visit,” Riesenberg says.
If visiting a popular recreation area, Riesenberg recommends getting creative. When an overlook is crowded, “Drive on,” she says. “I’ve been telling people: Do [a sequence of overlooks] backward—breeze past the crowded viewpoints, come back to those later.” She also suggests taking selfies. “People might not even think about it and ask others to take their pictures, but don’t hand them your phone!” she says.
Even with these advocacy groups’ education efforts, there are still gaps that a piecemeal response to a piecemeal issue exposes. The Recreate Responsibly Coalition hopes to not only fill in those gaps but also provide a streamlined and standardized approach to the outdoor industry’s transition back to recreation and outdoor access. “We all have some really hard decisions to be making,” Boué said. “We’re all going to be making some mistakes and crossing some boundaries. The outdoor industry just needed someone to say here it is, here’s our guidance.”
The Recreate Responsibly movement started in Washington and quickly caught the interest of groups like REI and the Outdoor Industry Alliance. Now composed of dozens of nonprofits, outdoor businesses, and land managers, the coalition published a set of best practices on May 21 to help people make decisions about how, where, and when to recreate outdoors. Many of the aforementioned advocacy groups have since joined Recreate Responsibly, with more in the process. By noon on launch day, the #RecreateResponsibly social media campaign, led by Boué, had reached more than 5 million people.
“You can’t expect people to uphold principles they’ve never heard of before,” Boué says. “If you can make information accessible, you do the work of eliminating the opportunity for someone to say, ‘I didn’t know that.’”
The coalition advises folks to stay close to home, slow down, and choose low-risk activities, pack out all garbage, and practice social distancing. If a trail is crowded, go to Plan B. If facilities are closed, don’t use them. While guidelines may feel like common sense to some, Boué says she knows it’s been helpful for others to have a set of clear and agreed-upon rules to follow.
While the world awaits the pandemic’s end, it can be helpful to find silver linings. “The opportunity to get people activated is huge, especially in an election year,” says Boué. “Every pair of boots on the trail is another budding activist.”