We’ve been talking about the importance of recreation on National Forests and the lack of adequate funding for the basics. What’s puzzling to me (and I’ve mentioned this before) is why the States are so successful at lobbying, and recreation interests are not.
We are always hearing about the economic value of the outdoor industry, and how its much better for forests and communities than “extractive uses.” Here’s a recent example from Utah.
“The reaction to that from the conservation community or the environmental community was ‘Oh, well, you can’t put a price tag on these places,’ or … ‘That’s not what we should be doing — it’s about these beautiful vistas,’” said Jessica Turner, president of the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable.
Her organization, referred to as ORR, is a broad coalition of outdoor recreation businesses and associations that come from nearly all subsets of the outdoor industry. One could say it represents the whole big tent of the industry, but Turner suggested that they’d also have to somehow include “yurt, glamp, lodge, RV,” as well as boat slips and then find ways to include engines, too.
whom does ORR represent? Member include states, the National Ski Association, the American Bus Association, RV industry associations, Boat US, Rivian, universities, the Diving Equipment and Marketing Association, Motorcycle, Snowmobiles and Booz Allen Hamilton (due to their contracting for Rec.gov).
There is definitely big money in all of these.. so here’s the mystery.. if the States could get IRA bucks for $1.5 bill (extra to Appropriated bucks) for the Urban and Community Forestry Program, why weren’t the states and industry asking for a big chunk for recreation (I could write the “climate resilience” verbiage myself). Or were they asking and some Congressional dynamics didn’t work to get the funding?
I’m not one of those who thinks that the FS should only be for NFS and R&D.. S&PF bucks wouldn’t be there except for States asking for it. Maybe States don’t lobby hard enough because the bucks don’t come to/through them.
According to ORR’s latest published research based on federal data, the outdoor recreation industry was worth $1.2 trillion in 2023, the most recent available data. That’s 2.3% of the U.S. gross domestic product.
Just the excise taxes on things like fuel and gas for ATVs, boats and purchasing the wide variety of required equipment brought in approximately $6 billion to the federal government’s purse that year.
For context, that means the outdoor recreation economy is larger than that of farming or mining. And it’s not that far from the oil and gas industry, either. That market was worth $1.55 trillion in 2024 and is approaching $1.6 trillion this year, according to Towards Chem & Materials’ last report.
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It seems to me that minerals, food and gas are necessary for recreationists to recreate. And we should always be careful to note that the ORR includes soccer balls and gardening tools.
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When the numbers are broken out to focus just on the money spent on public lands and waterways, their scale becomes clear. On public lands alone, the sector generates $128 billion a year. Recreational visitors fork over $72 billion directly to the federal government, with $27 billion spent at national parks, another $12 billion on U.S. Forest Service land and $6.2 on Bureau of Land Management land.
Some of my economist friends might say this shows the BLM needs to build more and/or charge more.
A similar approach of determining the actual monetary value of natural experiences was undertaken by the National Park Service and U.S. Geological Survey in a different study, where researchers determined an actual dollar value for the worth of a bear sighting. It’s more than one would think.
In both cases, when land and wildlife are left alone so Americans can recreate in the myriad ways they like to, they drive an awful lot of revenue for both the public and the private sector.
This is one of those “sounds vaguely plausible” statements.. and yet Americans have been happily recreating alongside oil and gas infrastructure, mining (at least in Colorado), thinned forests and range allotments. In real life, it doesn’t seem to be an either/or.
One of the more surprising statistics comes from the U.S. Forest Service. The report found that folks recreating in national forests brings in more revenue to the federal government than the timber industry. Recreation generates and maintains more jobs, too.
“Recreation … support(ed) 161,000 jobs, compared to the combined 103,200 jobs from forest products, livestock grazing, mineral extraction, and energy production,” the report states.
That statement was a tiny bit confusing as I read it it was another study that was done by the FS., but it’s more ORR. Inquiring minds might wonder about comparative pay in the different sectors.
In yearly sightings alone, individual grizzlies are worth $46,000 and individual black bears are worth $15,000. Said another way, the park’s grizzlies and black bears are worth about $10 million and $7 million, respectively, every year.
Enriquez and Richardson based their calculations on information in the Yellowstone Visitor Survey. That data set includes information that suggests travel costs, and also determines how much visitors value and prioritize seeing a bear and whether or not they saw one. Divining those numbers out yielded an accountable figure.
And, in economics terms, bears are great multiple use species, Enriquez explained. They have economic benefits and losses attached to them — similarly to other animals like elephants, moose, and wolves. To understand their value is less clear because, while the damages are easy to quantify in livestock depredation and property damage, the positive impact on tourism and subsequent local economies is less clear.
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“The way people talk about the economic value of lands it always has this really big bend towards ‘We’ve got to take something from it,’” Turner said. “We’re saying, sure, and also, you could just leave it there and build a trail or build a lodge and that’ll bring in revenue for a long time.”
So we have a very active industry… why are they not choosing to voluntarily pay into recreation/trails budgets or lobby for them? Or do they lobby, but what makes them unsuccessful?
Or…why don’t we ever hear mention of a tax on camping/hiking/RVing purchases equivalent to what hunters and anglers pay on their equipment?
I think most hikers would not mind a small tax on their boots that would help support trail maintenance and improvement. As for RVs, folks that have enough disposable income to purchase any type of recreational vehicle might certainly be willing to pay a small tax on their RV, knowing that money goes to maintain existing campgrounds and build new ones.
As a former manager, I can see your point; as a non-government employee now, I see:
Tax his land,
Tax his bed,
Tax the table
At which he’s fed.
Tax his work,
Tax his pay,
He works for peanuts
Anyway!
Tax his cow,
Tax his goat,
Tax his pants,
Tax his coat.
Tax his tobacco,
Tax his drink,
Tax him if he
Tries to think.
Tax his car,
Tax his gas,
Find other ways
To tax his ass.
Tax all he has
Then let him know
That you won’t be done
Till he has no dough.
When he screams and hollers;
Then tax him some more,
Tax him till
He’s good and sore.
Then tax his coffin,
Tax his grave,
Tax the sod in
Which he’s laid.
When he’s gone,
Do not relax,
Its time to apply
The inheritance tax…..
I’m neither for or against, but once the talked turned to valuing bears at per-sighting rates I just kinda tuned out and threw up in my mouth a little bit.
Yeah, those willingness-to-pay values are pretty bogus.
In the 1980’s we were using willingness-to-pay values in the $50 range per day hike in forest planning. I had lots of environmental types argue with me that those values were much to low. They were willing to pay MORE than that for each hike!!
That was until the Forest Service Northwest Trail Pass came into being and at that point all the hikers did NOT want to pay $15 year to hike on Forest Service trails.
When I became the Recreation Program Manager on the Wenatchee in 1997 I had a meet and greet meeting with the district recreation folks. After my spiel on my expectations about the recreation program I turned the tables on myself and asked what the district folks wanted ME to do.
The message was delivered loud and clear. Find us money to fund the recreation program. The appropriated dollars did NOT cover the fixed costs of the recreation program on the forest.
I spent a lot of time chasing money for the recreation program and learned a lot in the process. Even found a bit of money.
Congress has been slowly giving the Forest Service the authority to withhold “revenue” dollars for Forest Service programs.
If I were Chief, I would quietly ask each functional area for ideas on how to increase the monies that the agency receives outside the appropriation process.
It is really difficult to do that on a Forest by Forest basis. Really much simpler at the National level and there are several programs that can easily be adapted to funneling recreation dollars not only to the Forest Service, but BLM, NPS, USFWS, and COE programs.
These days it is looking like even the COE needs more recreation dollars!!!
Vladimir, thanks for sharing your experience. That too was my experience with willingness to pay. I am very fond of economists, but sometimes their world of calculations and assumptions departs from meaningful reality. Many of us live in neighborhoods with black bears and pay extra for bear proof cans..
Would you like to write a guest post on your ideas for programs that can be adapted to funneling recreation dollars? I think we all agree we’re in need of new ideas, and blaming conditions of lack since forever on a given Admin or Congress doesn’t seem very realistic.
Ok, I wrote it.
More difficult to write than I thought, but it could get a conversation started. There are many facets to this issue and each almost requires paper unto itself.
Where do I send it??
Vladimir
you can reply [email protected]
will send email.
Those are good comments.
In my last ten years working in recreation a large part of my job was protecting recreational access to public lands.
I had more conversations with the fisheries biologist and wildlife biologist about MAINTAINING existing recreation access on National Forest managed land.
That takes money to move and redesign recreational facilities to mitigate the impact of humans on fish and wildlife resources.
I’m assuming that additional funding would be used to improve the quality of the “product” provided by the government. Could it be that the demand for recreation and its supporting industries is not very dependent on the quality of the recreation product? Do people stop hiking because a trail is not maintained or an outhouse isn’t useable? Would they recreate more often (and buy more stuff) if there were more places they could go, or because of reduced (or at least slower increases in) crowding? Those are honest questions, and I’m not sure what a private industry would think they are buying, and they may not see much of a return on an investment in lobbying.
First, anything that has the Southwick name attached to it is immediately suspect to me. Secondly, how ironic that this report appears at the same time that there is serious questioning about the cost-benefit of maintaining parts of federal estate. Regardless, we should get to see the relative importance of recreation when the U.S. institutes austerity measures to address the $38 trillion debt and the $100 billion we are spending every month just on interest on that debt.
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“And we should always be careful to note that the ORR includes soccer balls and gardening tools.”
It also includes government spending, construction of tennis courts, and amusements parks, among other outdoor recreation pursuits. But even excluding those, some of the conclusions seem highly suspect compared to other available reports, including from the agencies who actually collect the fees.
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“Most major federal land and water management agencies measure participation and visitor spending”.
Not according to GAO, CRS and the agencies themselves (except NPS) unless this is something that they’ve began collecting in the last few years.
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“Federal lands and waters are the single largest component of the of the nation’s $1.2 trillion outdoor economy.”
The federal government owns roughly 28% of the U.S. with nearly 90% of those holdings in 12 western states with 23% of the U.S. population. That alone makes me skeptical that recreation on that concentration is larger than all the RV’ing, golf courses, parks, etc., etc. across the rest of the nation. I couldn’t find the data they purportedly used but I’m certainly going to keep digging.
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“Recreational visitors fork over $72 billion directly to the federal government, with $27 billion spent at national parks, another $12 billion on U.S. Forest Service land and $6.2 on Bureau of Land Management land”.
Wow. The federal government must have implemented a massive revenue collection scheme since CRS and GAO were publishing direct recreational revenue collections from the agencies in the millions just a few years ago.
BLM recreational fee collections in 2013 = $17.9 million with average collections of about $21 million from 2010-2019, supposed collections in 2023 = $6.2 BILLION a 3334% increase.
USFWS averaged $6 million in recreation fee collections from 2010 to 2019 but now direct visitor spending is $3.3 BILLION.
NPS recreation fees collection in 2019 = $333.4 million, now $27.2 BILLION.
Ya, I’m not buying this.
I hope that you or someone would be willing to look into these figures..we ought to know the direct payments to the feds, even though the other numbers have a variety of assumptions. More fodder for The People’s Database.
Perhaps the direct payments to federal agencies would not be so hard to nail down if they had still been publishing their Triennial Report To Congress on the implementation of federal recreation fees, as statutorily required by FLREA. The last one was released in 2015. Hardly “Triennial.”
Hi Kitty! I wish Congress would either pay attention and make agencies accountable for requirements, or remove the requirements. Instead of “continuous improvement” Congress seems to operate on “increasing layers of disarray.”
There is a new book coming out that seems to directly investigate and suggest solutions to this issue, as well as many other challenges that face the USFS and public ands. It is called Trail Work. From what I’ve seen online, it has early quotes of support from Bill McKibben, Robert Moor (author of On Trails), and some other notable authors.
Hi Land, it sounds interesting. Would you be willing to write a summary or review for us?
Hmmm, there is plenty of federal money for this: https://wyofile.com/interior-secretary-burgum-asked-public-land-users-to-flag-negative-depictions-of-american-history-wyoming-criticized-the-effort-instead/
Secretary of Interior Burgum required the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management and other agencies to post signage with QR codes allowing the public to assist in “compliance with this Order.” The Order was to ensure “ensure that all public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties within the Department’s jurisdiction do not contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living … and instead focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people.”
The American people instead chose to criticize this use of the tax dollars as “whitewashing” history (interesting double meaning there).“ “The only thing embarrassing are these signs you keep putting up. How awful that our own federal administration is so sensitive to be afraid of truth.”