Exploring the Bipartisan EXPLORE Act

This is a screenshot from the linked High Country News story.
Somehow I don’t think the passage of this bill has gotten the detailed attention it deserves. Hopefully, readers can add links to their own organizations’ summaries and concerns.

This is a bipartisan bill, so Yay! there.
Here’s the bill summary

This bill sets forth policies for the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture related to recreation on certain public lands.

Issues addressed include

itemized budget information for outdoor recreation across departments;
long-distance bike trails;
recreational climbing activities;
target shooting ranges;
overnight campsites in Arkansas;
filming and still photography;
motorized and nonmotorized access;
invasive species;
gateway communities;
real-time information for the public on visitor levels;
broadband and cellular service;
public-private partnerships;
access for persons with disabilities to trails and recreation opportunities;
recreational and job opportunities for military members and veterans;
youth access to recreational lands;
issuance of special recreation permits;
a digital version of the National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Pass;
extension of seasonal recreation opportunities; and
volunteers on public recreational lands.

Here’s a piece by Jordan Smith of Utah State on the Act

The EXPLORE Act: A Step Toward Solutions

While the EXPLORE Act doesn’t directly address chronic underinvestment—no new federal funds are appropriated—it introduces significant reforms that empower federal agencies to work more flexibly with state governments, universities, and private industry. This flexibility is critical for efficiently expanding outdoor recreation opportunities on public lands.

One of the Act’s standout provisions is a pilot program allowing the Secretary of the Interior to enter into cooperative agreements with states, municipalities, and private corporations to construct, maintain, and manage recreation infrastructure. This is a game-changer. It mirrors the success of the National Forest Ski Area Permit Act of 1986, which facilitated private sector involvement in operating ski resorts on federal lands. Similarly, the EXPLORE Act could pave the way for decades of collaborative and private management of outdoor recreation opportunities.

By opening the door to partnerships, the Act creates opportunities for creative problem-solving at the state and local levels. Whether states and private entities seize these opportunities remains to be seen, but the resources and demand are there. States, particularly in the Western U.S., have been ramping up investments in outdoor recreation, setting the stage for transformative partnerships.

Myself, I’m a bit wary, not of Tribe or county or state and federal partnerships, but of public-private partnerships.

N.S. Lyons has a piece on his Substack on the more general topic of public-private partnerships:

The key problem with the public-private partnership model is that, despite the word “public” appearing in the name, far too often in practice the actual public seem to be left out of the approach entirely. That is to say that the alignment of corporation and state that occurs through the public-private partnership model seems far too often to operate entirely outside the system of democratic governance. The interests of various “stakeholders” – corporations, NGOs, state bureaucracies, and numerous self-interested officials – may be consulted, but the demos notably is not.

In fact, often the advantage of the approach – as perceived by said stakeholders of both corporation and state – seems to be precisely that public-private partnership allows for a convenient end-run around the obstacle of the broader democratic process and any potential concerns that the voting public may hold. And, once they are shielded from democratic accountability, policies and priorities pursued through the public-private partnership model naturally become particularly ripe for rent seeking, regulatory capture, corruption, and abuse. Or, worse, there develops a gross distortion of basic interests between the “agents” involved and their true “owners” – that is, the public.

There’s also this piece in the High Country News that highlights the importance of involving Tribes and the thoughts of some other groups:

Meanwhile, some conservationists remain wary of the alliance between outdoor recreation and conservation, cautioning that increased recreation can strain infrastructure, disrupt wildlife, degrade trails, deplete water resources and increase carbon emissions.

Sanford, the policy director at The Wilderness Society, is hopeful that outdoor recreation interests can be leveraged to pass broader climate and public-lands legislation in the future. He sees the EXPLORE Act as an important milestone in this process, providing a potential blueprint for future laws that balance public lands, climate policy, recreation access and economic opportunity.

I haven’t dug into the nuts and bolts of the bill, maybe someone has done so and would like to add information?

7 thoughts on “Exploring the Bipartisan EXPLORE Act”

  1. I have not read the bill.

    Here is the link to the text of the bill: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/6492/text

    I have concerns about a mass expansion of public/private partnerships on public lands.

    First….the agency disappears from public view. If the agency is invisible to the public it is a short road to lack of public support. Government agencies that provide a broad service to the public cannot exist without public support in my opinion.

    Second…..the private partnerships through political connections end up running the agency and setting policy. I remember under the Clinton years the passage of the ski fee bill. The Regional Office called a mandatory meeting for all FS folks involved in ski area management. We actually, had to sign that we would be there, no actings.

    The presentation was by the Ski Industry on how “we” in the Forest Service were to implement the ski fee bill!!!!

    I was beyond pissed!! Nobody in the media caught it, but say if we had a similar meeting with grazing or timber groups that would have made headlines in the media about Forest Service corruption.

    I just got to my place in Arizona, and have a bunch of housekeeping, but will try to make time to read the bill. The only Forester in Congress sponsored the bill.

    I am a lumper not a splitter, so not sure how much of a deep dive I can provide.

    Reply
  2. Vlad, I agree about presence of federal employees. It kind of worries me when there’s an FS project, and American Forest folks drive FS trucks and give talks wearing American Forest logos. Would the Parkies do that? They are all about the brand, it seems to me.

    I think there are two things going on there..
    a) Employees tend to whistle-blow about some interest groups/corporations/industries and not others.
    b) We don’t know why some corporations and industries are considered good and others bad.
    And as a person who has tried to get journalists interested in similar stories, it seems like many are not interested in reporting on “corruption” by good organizations.

    Reply
  3. I have not yet read the bill either. While I share concerns about public-private partnerships, properly implemented (and I recongize that phrase is doing a lot of work) they can help communities participate in the improvement of nearby public lands, which is a good thing.

    An issue that can arise with these efforts, though, is maintenance. It’s usually easier to get people/organizations/companies to fund new stuff than to pay to maintain it afterwards.

    Reply
    • I think the same is true of Congress. They like to build programs (even overlapping and duplicating programs). After looking at this 14 page (!) summary, I think we’re going to have to section it out to discuss it.

      Reply
  4. It’s nice to see from Lyons’ piece that at least some conservatives have realized the problem with public-private partnerships replacing government services, but let’s not flush history down the memory hole here: those partnerships were a Republican idea popularized in the 1990s and early 2000s as a way of reducing government spending and harnessing the (supposedly) superior competency of private enterprises.

    Democrats got stuck with them and went along with it, producing our modern mess, but it was a Republican idea from the get-go.

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    • Pileated.. another hypothesis might be that certain Foundation/NGO elements within the D party saw opportunities to advance their interests without those pesky voters and their elected officials.

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      • I don’t disagree with that hypothesis … but the opportunity to do that grew out of the Republican embrace of public-private partnerships. If you go back to the lefty press of the late 1990s and early 2000s you’ll find lots of opposition to them.

        Reply

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