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KUNC is among the founding partners of the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration of public media stations that serve the Western states of Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

Offices Of Outdoor Recreation Link Up in New National Network

Colorado Outdoor Recreation Industry Office

Outdoor recreation offices in the West are spearheading a national network to promote the industry along with The National Governors Association.  

The first official Office of Outdoor Recreation opened in Utah in 2013.  More than a dozen other states have followed suit in the years since – including Colorado, , Montana, and Nevada.

Sue Gander, with the , said the directors of some of those western offices voiced a desire for the national network to help them all coordinate.

“They were self-organizing and realized that the group was growing quickly,” she said. “They wanted to stay on top of that and have a chance to have an institutional home for their efforts.”

So the Outdoor Recreation Learning Network was born. Gander said the network will host workshops, summits, and webinars about ways each state can promote the outdoors and the economy surrounding it.  

She pointed out “the latest federal numbers that have come out from the Bureau of Economic Analysis shows that the outdoor industry nationally accounts for 2.2 percent of the GDP.”

The network is funded by REI, the Outdoor Industry Association, and the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable. The group’s first summit will be held in Utah in October.

This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUER in Salt Lake City, KUNR in Nevada and KRCC and KUNC in Colorado. 

 

Copyright 2020 91.5 KRCC. To see more, visit .

Ali Budner is KRCC's reporter for the Mountain West News Bureau, a journalism collaborative that unites six stations across the Mountain West, including stations in Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, and Montana to better serve the people of the region. The project focuses its reporting on topic areas including issues of land and water, growth, politics, and Western culture and heritage.
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