On Saturday, Jan. 4, President Joe Biden signed the Expanding Public Lands Outdoor Recreation Experiences (EXPLORE) Act into law. This legislation aims to expand outdoor recreation access and includes a bundle of conservation-related initiatives, including wildfire mitigation, promoting renewable energy development on public lands, supporting ecosystem restoration, expanding public-land access and funding infrastructure improvements in gateway communities.
The bill’s scope is impressively broad: It protects access to rock-climbing infrastructure in national parks and forests, and facilitates trail-building, parking lot construction, and other infrastructure improvements on national parks, forests and Bureau of Land Management land, which is found predominantly in the West. It also includes direct conservation efforts, such as a measure to stop the spread of invasive zebra mussels.
Co-sponsored by Arkansas Rep. Bruce Westerman, R, and Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D, the legislation attracted the necessary bipartisan support to pass a divided Congress by carefully avoiding any direct mention of climate change. Instead, it framed outdoor recreation as both a powerful economic driver and a pathway for advancing important conservation policies.
“The outdoors transcends political stripe,” said Luis Benitez, former director of the Colorado Outdoor Recreation Industry Office. “Hunters and people who fish are traditionally more Republican, yet consider folks that consider themselves wildlife conservationists Democrat. In the end, they are both focused on the same thing.”
“The outdoors transcends political stripe.”
The EXPLORE Act’s success underscores the growing political influence of the outdoor industry, with some calling it a new high-water mark for the industry’s ability to shape policy, in large part due to its growing economic might and the fact that it’s become a vital source of revenue for many Western communities. According to a 2023 analysis by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), the outdoor industry contributes $1.2 trillion in gross domestic output — about 3.1% of the GDP — and supports more than 5 million jobs, making it larger than either the oil and gas or the pharmaceutical industries
“What elected official would ignore a trillion-dollar economy in the United States responsible for that many jobs? It changed the conversation,” Benitez said.
Paul Sanford, director of policy analysis at The Wilderness Society, has worked on aspects of the EXPLORE Act since 2011. He explained that policymakers increasingly recognize the outdoor industry’s buy-in as essential for passing legislation.
“When members of Congress see these numbers, they begin to realize that this is not just a nice-to-have. This is a have-to-have,” Sanford said. “We were able to work across the aisle pretty effectively because this is everybody’s bill.”
Recreation advocates say that their industry has a singular capacity to unite a variety of interests — from anglers and hunters and mountain bikers to conservationists, climbers and wildlife watchers — around common goals. Conservation organizations like The Wilderness Society now see appeals to outdoor recreation as key to advancing legislation in a polarized government.
The EXPLORE Act builds on years of outdoor-recreation-focused legislation and activism. In 2020, the outdoor industry played a pivotal role in securing bipartisan support for the Great American Outdoors Act, which ensured permanent funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF).
In 2016, advocacy by the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition and the outdoor industry led to the designation of the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. When President Donald Trump shrank the monument during his first term, tribes and outdoor leaders like Patagonia, REI and the North Face rallied support, culminating in the Biden administration’s restoration of the original boundaries in 2021.
But even though conservation and outdoor recreation groups have applauded the EXPLORE Act, it has faced criticism for failing to explicitly address tribal sovereignty or integrate tribal perspectives.
“The act’s success in Indian Country will depend on how well implementation respects tribal sovereignty.”
“Speaking as both someone who participates in these economies, runs a business in this area, and is a member of the Navajo Nation, I see fundamental differences between the act’s economic-recreation framework and some tribes’ approaches to land relationships,” said Len Necefer, CEO and founder of Natives Outdoors.
Necefer and other Indigenous leaders argue that the Act needs stronger protections for sacred sites and traditional cultural properties, clearer frameworks for tribal consultation, and mechanisms to safeguard culturally sensitive information in mapping and data initiatives.
“The act’s success in Indian Country will depend on how well implementation respects tribal sovereignty,” Necefer said. “Some tribes have found innovative ways to bridge this gap, developing recreation economies while maintaining cultural sovereignty and stewardship responsibilities.”
Necefer also emphasized the importance of recognizing tribes’ authority to manage recreation in ways that protect treaty rights and cultural resources while supporting economic development.
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 think that outdoor recreation is uniquely suited to garner bipartisan support in an era characterized by gridlock,” Sanford said.
