Photo by Torch Pictures
This September, the American Canoe Association joined Outdoor Alliance in Washington D.C. to celebrate 10-years of advocacy by meeting with lawmakers and asking them to pass the EXPLORE Act.
Outdoor Alliance, who this year celebrated their 10-year anniversary, is the only organization in the U.S. that unites the voices of outdoor enthusiasts to conserve public lands and to ensure that they are managed in a way that embraces the human-powered experience.
As a coalition of national advocacy organizations, members of the Outdoor Alliance include the American Canoe Association, American Whitewater, Access Fund, the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA), Winter Wildlands Alliance, the Mountaineers, the American Alpine Club, the Mazamas, the Colorado Mountain Club, and the Surfrider Foundation.
ACA on the Hill
Representatives of the ACA joined nearly 80 advocates in over 80 meetings on Capitol Hill with congress members and administration officials in Outdoor Alliance’s largest advocacy fly-in to date. In meetings, we asked lawmakers to pass the EXPLORE Act — a bipartisan bill package that will improve outdoor recreation on public lands and waters and includes many key bills that Outdoor Alliance and their partners have helped develop.
ACA Stewardship and Public Policy Director, Brett Mayer (left) and Senator Mark Kelly’s Chief of Staff, Carmen Gallus-Diaz (right) outside of Mark Kelly’s D.C. office.
Meeting in-person with lawmakers is one of the best ways to keep the issues that are important to paddlers and other outdoor enthusiasts, priorities in congress. Politics can feel like a hostile and unwelcoming space from the outside. We cannot emphasize enough how much of a misconception this is. News cycles tend to fixate on the extremes and miss the less sensational but equally important stories. Many members of congress are outdoor enthusiasts themselves and are equally passionate about our public lands and waters.
Senator Michael Bennet, for example, engaged in a productive conversation on how he could better support the interests of outdoor enthusiasts. During the meeting he also shared a story about his ascent of Mount Elbert, the highest peak in Colorado and expressed his disappointment that professional climber, Tommy Caldwell, who was also in attendance, had seen more caribou during his recent trip to Alaska than he had.
Human powered outdoor recreation offers an important opportunity for people to connect with the land and each other. This year, Outdoor Alliance launched their Grasstops Collective — a leadership and advocacy development program that trains grasstops advocates to build relationships with policymakers and advocate for conservation priorities.
Outdoor Alliance’s Grasstops Collective
Members of Outdoor Alliance Grasstops Collective celebrate a successful day of meetings on Capitol Hill.
“Politics are too serious a matter to be left to politicians” — Charles de Gaulle
It is in this spirit that Outdoor Alliance brought together the first cohort of the Grasstops Collective. Comprised of 20 outdoor enthusiasts from around the United States, this cohort has met virtually twice a month beginning in May before coming together in Washington D.C. for Outdoor Alliance’s 10-Year Anniversary Fly-in.
This thoughtful and innovative program is demystifying how public policy impacts your ability to play outside and creating a powerful group of advocates to better represent paddlers, mountain bikers, climbers, hikers, surfers, and backcountry skiers. The Bureau of Economic Analysis calculates the economic output of outdoor recreation to be $1.1 trillion, surpassing industries such as mining and farming and ranching in addition to contributing over 5 million jobs (2022 Outdoor Recreation Economy Data Release). As paddlers and users of public lands and waters, we are an incredibly important group with the power to elevate recreation in the national dialogue.
Outdoor Alliance has some fantastic resources for all outdoor enthusiasts who want to be outdoor advocates. We highly recommend reading Outdoor Alliance’s Advocacy 101: Going from Outdoor Enthusiast to Outdoor Advocate and taking the Mountaineers’ free Advocacy 101 eLearning Course.
10 Years of Conservation Powered by Outdoor Recreation
A huge congratulations to Outdoor Alliance on their 10-year anniversary and for 10 impactful years of conservation. By uniting some of the most influential human-powered outdoor recreation advocacy organizations, Outdoor Alliance has become a driving force behind some of the United States’ biggest conservation wins. Outdoor Alliance has created something special, and we are excited to be a part of the next 10 years.