Latest news with #outdoorrecreation
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Gov. Jared Polis signs new bills on the Western Slope
GRAND VALLEY, Colo. (KREX) – Governor Jared Polis made an appearance here on the Western Slope, signing nine bills, four of which were signed here in the Grand Valley. Polis explains, 'We think about the quality of that experience, the importance to our economy of the work they do, the sales in our stores. But also a big reason people live in Western Colorado because of the access to the outdoors.' Brian Isakson, a salesperson with Over the Edge Sports Fruita Ltd., states, 'We support the outdoors as well and we're happy to have the new bill.' Starting in Fruita, Polis signed SB25-174, which would support the outdoor recreation economy with Representative Matt Soper in attendance. Rep. Matt Soper from House District 54 states, 'We want to make sure that they come back or if they're Coloradans engaging in these activities as well, that they also have a safe and wonderful time as well.' The governor made his way through Grand Junction and stopped at Bonsai to sign HB25-1215, which is the redistribution of lottery funds to. Adrian Varney, the proceeds manager for the Colorado lottery, states, 'What's exciting about this bill is the reallocation of some funding the outdoor equity grant program, which up to this point in time, has been 100% funded, with lottery funding is increasing their allocation. And HB25-1021, which is for tax incentives for employee-owned businesses, both bills were sponsored by Rick Taggart. Representative Rick Taggart of House District 55 states, 'This bill is intended to help that transition on both sides of the transaction, both for the seller, the entrepreneur as well as the employees.' And the last stop in the Grand Valley was at Community Hospital with the signing of SB25-071, which will prohibit restrictions on 340B drugs. 'Expanding the prescription drug savings is huge and that work continues, saving money on health care,' Polis explains. Chris Thomas, president and CEO of Community Hospital, states, 'This bill is going to save us approximately two and a half to $3 million a year and so with those dollars. We'll continue to do endocrinology, we'll continue to be able to do rheumatology, and all the great things we're trying to do for the community.' Polis tells WesternSlopeNow there's a new bill in the works aiming to reduce payroll tax, allowing everyone to keep a small bit of their paycheck each month. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
New York Times
6 days ago
- Health
- New York Times
How to Stay Safe While Enjoying the Backcountry This Summer
The outdoor boom that began during the pandemic has had staying power. Since 2020, the number of people visiting state and national parks has soared. Unfortunately, so too have the number of search-and-rescue efforts, as many people enter the backcountry woefully unprepared. With funding cuts at the national park and forest levels — and with volunteer response teams stretched thin — now is a good time to learn how to recreate safely in the wild. 'A lot of the call types we've had are people getting stuck in technical terrain that exceeds their ability,' said Chris Carr, a paramedic in Colorado, referring to environments that demand agility and skill to traverse. Gear that is more accessible to novices, social media posts from beautiful locales and a false sense of security carrying a cellphone creates may all be playing a role here. If you're planning a trip into the wilderness, here are some steps that can help you avoid becoming a statistic this summer. Before you leave home, get out your guidebooks, look at official websites and learn about any trails, mountains or terrain you plan to explore. Keep in mind that the terrain you're used to at home might be different from what you encounter on a new trail; the drier, dustier surfaces of the West are a different experience than the rocks, roots and mud you'll frequently encounter in the East. 'Wilderness areas can be vast and can get remote quickly. Start small and don't take on big chunks right out of the gate,' said Corenne Black, a forest ranger with the New York Department of Environmental Conservation. In some areas, like New York's Adirondack Park, where Ms. Black works, it can be easy to make a wrong turn or get off trail if you're not paying close attention. While apps like 'All Trails' can be helpful, you shouldn't always depend on your electronics, either. Learning to use an old-fashioned map and compass — and bringing them with you — can mean the difference between a planned day hike and spending the night in the wilderness. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
E&E News
6 days ago
- Business
- E&E News
Outdoor recreation field hearing to focus on tariff impacts
The Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee will hold a hearing in Colorado on Friday focused on the outdoor recreation economy in tough times. Titled 'Beyond the Trailhead: Supporting Outdoor Recreation in an Uncertain Economy,' the hearing will focus on ways Congress can support the outdoor recreation industry, which is valued at more than $1 trillion and has grown significantly since the Covid-19 pandemic. The field hearing, hosted by Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), will hear testimony from three outdoor recreation retailers that have been saddled by the Trump administration's tariff regime. The committee is led by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa). Advertisement In written testimony, Eagle Creek CEO Travis Campbell warns that 'in the wake of newly announced tariffs, it feels as though our country is systematically working against businesses like ours — raising our costs dramatically while fueling consumer anxiety that suppresses demand.'
Fast Company
18-05-2025
- Politics
- Fast Company
The Wilderness Letter is a reminder that nature shaped America's identity
As summer approaches, millions of Americans begin planning or taking trips to state and national parks, seeking to explore the wide range of outdoor recreational opportunities across the nation. A lot of them will head toward the nation's wilderness areas— 110 million acres, mostly in the West, that are protected by the strictest federal conservation rules. When Congress passed the Wilderness Act in 1964, it described wilderness areas as places that evoked mystery and wonder, 'where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.' These are wild landscapes that present nature in its rawest form. The law requires the federal government to protect these areas ' for the permanent good of the whole people.' Wilderness areas are found in national parks, conservation land overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, national forests and U.S. Fish and Wildlife refuges. In early May 2025, the U.S. House of Representatives began to consider allowing the sale of federal lands in six counties in Nevada and Utah, five of which contain wilderness areas. Ostensibly, these sales are to promote affordable housing, but the reality is that the proposal, introduced by U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei, a Nevada Republican, is a departure from the standard process of federal land exchanges that accommodate development in some places but protect wilderness in others. Regardless of whether Americans visit their public lands or know when they have crossed a wilderness boundary, as environmental historians we believe that everyone still benefits from the existence and protection of these precious places. This belief is an idea eloquently articulated and popularized 65 years ago by the noted Western writer Wallace Stegner. His eloquence helped launch the modern environmental movement and gave power to the idea that the nation's public lands are a fundamental part of the United States' national identity and a cornerstone of American freedom. Humble origins In 1958, Congress established the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission to examine outdoor recreation in the U.S. in order to determine not only what Americans wanted from the outdoors, but to consider how those needs and desires might change decades into the future. One of the commission's members was David E. Pesonen, who worked at the Wildland Research Center at the University of California at Berkeley. He was asked to examine wilderness and its relationship to outdoor recreation. Pesonen later became a notable environmental lawyer and leader of the Sierra Club. But at the time, Pesonen had no idea what to say about wilderness. However, he knew someone who did. Pesonen had been impressed by the wild landscapes of the American West in Stegner's 1954 history ' Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West.' So he wrote to Stegner, who at the time was at Stanford University, asking for help in articulating the wilderness idea. Stegner's response, which he said later was written in a single afternoon, was an off-the-cuff riff on why he cared about preserving wildlands. This letter became known as the Wilderness Letter and marked a turning point in American political and conservation history. Pesonen shared the letter with the rest of the commission, which also shared it with newly installed Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall. Udall found its prose to be so profound, he read it at the seventh Wilderness Conference in 1961 in San Francisco, a speech broadcast by KCBS, the local FM radio station. The Sierra Club published the letter in the record of the conference's proceedings later that year. But it was not until its publication in The Washington Post on June 17, 1962, that the letter reached a national audience and captured the imagination of generations of Americans. An eloquent appeal In the letter, Stegner connected the idea of wilderness to a fundamental part of American identity. He called wilderness ' something that has helped form our character and that has certainly shaped our history as a people . . . the challenge against which our character as a people was formed . . . (and) the thing that has helped to make an American different from and, until we forget it in the roar of our industrial cities, more fortunate than other men.' Without wild places, he argued, the U.S. would be just like every other overindustrialized place in the world. In the letter, Stegner expressed little concern with how wilderness might support outdoor recreation on public lands. He didn't care whether wilderness areas had once featured roads, trails, homesteads or even natural resource extraction. What he cared about was Americans' freedom to protect and enjoy these places. Stegner recognized that the freedom to protect, to restrain ourselves from consuming, was just as important as the freedom to consume. Perhaps most importantly, he wrote, wilderness was ' an intangible and spiritual resource,' a place that gave the nation 'our hope and our excitement,' landscapes that were 'good for our spiritual health even if we never once in ten years set foot in it.' Without it, Stegner lamented, 'never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste.' To him, the nation's natural cathedrals and the vaulted ceiling of the pure blue sky are Americans' sacred spaces as much as the structures in which they worship on the weekends. Stegner penned the letter during a national debate about the value of preserving wild places in the face of future development. ' Something will have gone out of us as a people,' he wrote, 'if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed.' If not protected, Stegner believed these wildlands that had helped shape American identity would fall to what he viewed as the same exploitative forces of unrestrained capitalism that had industrialized the nation for the past century. Every generation since has an obligation to protect these wild places. Stegner's Wilderness Letter became a rallying cry to pass the Wilderness Act. The closing sentences of the letter are Stegner's best: ' We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.' This phrase, 'the geography of hope,' is Stegner's most famous line. It has become shorthand for what wilderness means: the wildlands that defined American character on the Western frontier, the wild spaces that Americans have had the freedom to protect, and the natural places that give Americans hope for the future of this planet. America's 'best idea' Stegner returned to themes outlined in the Wilderness Letter again two decades later in his essay 'The Best Idea We Ever Had: An Overview,' published in Wilderness magazine in spring 1983. Writing in response to the Reagan administration's efforts to reduce protection of the National Park System, Stegner declared that the parks were 'Absolutely American, absolutely democratic.' He said they reflect us as a nation, at our best rather than our worst, and without them, millions of Americans' lives, his included, would have been poorer. Public lands are more than just wilderness or national parks. They are places for work and play. They provide natural resources, wildlife habitat, clean air, clean water and recreational opportunities to small towns and sprawling metro areas alike. They are, as Stegner said, cures for cynicism and places of shared hope. Stegner's words still resonate as Americans head for their public lands and enjoy the beauty of the wild places protected by wilderness legislation this summer. With visitor numbers increasing annually and agency budgets at historic lows, we believe it is useful to remember how precious these places are for all Americans. And we agree with Stegner that wilderness, public lands writ large, are more valuable to Americans' collective identity and expression of freedom than they are as real estate that can be sold or commodities that can be extracted.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Jemez Springs prepares for overhaul of sewage collection system after overflow spill
JEMEZ SPRINGS (KRQE) – A northern New Mexico village known for its outdoor recreation had some sewer overflow spill into their river last week- it's the second time this year. 'This system has aged to a point where we're going to have these problems more often,' said Village of Jemez Springs Mayor Mike Nealeigh. Story continues below New Mexico Insiders: Leader Of Albuquerque FBI Steps Down News: Video: Santa Ana police officer arrested for DUI and alleged battery Community: Poll: Where is the best place to go camping in New Mexico? For outdoor enthusiasts and tourists, Jemez Springs has a lot to offer, including beautiful landscapes, trails, the iconic hot springs, and the Jemez River. But sewage problems continue to trouble the small town of just about 200 people, as they deal with the aftermath of an overflow in their sewage collection lines last week. 'The impacts, you don't want to be fishing in a river that has wastewater fluent in it,' Mayor Nealeigh said. 'We're always concerned about the economic impact, of course, of this issue and forest fires; anything that shuts down the forest or causes people to think twice about coming up and enjoying the recreational opportunities.' An alert was sent out to residents about the issue, while workers from the village and Jemez Pueblo helped to restore flow in the system. Due to the spill, several recreational sites down river, like campgrounds and fishing access points, were shut down for several days. Mayor Nealeigh said the problem is due to how 'fragile' the collection system is. A mixture of root damage to the lines, its decades-old age, and having a one-man wastewater team has made it difficult to keep up with ongoing issues. He also said it's been years since it's been regularly maintained. 'That has not been done in probably 20 years,' Mayor Nealeigh explained. However, the village has taken steps to find a long-term fix. They're preparing to renovate millions of dollars' worth of lines. 'We're working, right now, to clean the manholes, to clear the lines so that the cameras can get in there, see exactly where the problems are; and then the 3 million dollars will be applied to the problems in the order of their urgency,' Mayor Nealeigh added. The mayor said recreational sites south of town were reopened a few days following the spill, after speaking with the U.S. Forest Service to see if it was safe. The village hopes to begin the renovation process in about six months. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
