Outdoor Resources Review Group Report - American Recreation ...

and recreation facilities in states and urban
areas, perhaps understandably, have not been
the Park Service’s top priority. Without explicit
recognition in open space programs, such
important issues as capital needs in urban parks
or accessibility to close-to-home recreation, for
example, may receive only marginal attention.
Though plentiful at all levels of government,
planning processes are not integrated in any
meaningful fashion and thus have not been
adequate to facilitate setting priorities and
ensuring effective and efficient expenditure
of funds. Despite numerous planning
requirements associated with public programs
for parks, wildlife, forestry, air and water quality,
and more, an overall picture of conditions and
trends in land and water conservation remains
elusive. Identifying and targeting resources
worthy of protection is near impossible.
Crafting strategies to address these priorities is
difficult. The quality of plans differs markedly
from state to state. And they fail to capture
the full range of outdoor resources or tie in
the work of public and private organizations
engaged in land and water conservation.
The problem is not that planning tools are not
available but rather the lack of incentive to
use them and the lack of resources to prepare
them. The State Comprehensive Outdoor
Recreation Plan, required for eligibility to
receive LWCF monies, is supposed to assess
needs and priorities. Some states take the
obligation seriously and update their plans
regularly to reflect changing demographics,
new preferences for recreation and outdoor
activities, or other strategic considerations.
Others, seeing scant motivation for planning
without assurance that stateside LWCF funding
will be available, appear to put little effort into
updating their plans. Plans for their own sake
are clearly not worth the trouble. And typically
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the plans are incomplete in capturing the
full range of state and local recreation lands
and waters.
Another example is the State Wildlife Action
Plan, which is required to tap a grant program
administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service. These state plans identify species at
risk and needed conservation actions. These,
too, differ in quality from state to state. No one
document in many states captures all outdoor
resources. New York’s wildlife action plan, for
example, does not factor in 400,000 acres of
state parklands. That state’s Open Space plan
may come closest to the objective: it is revised
every three years through statewide hearings
that document urban, suburban, and rural
places where important values—watersheds or
wildlife corridors, for instance—merit protection.
Consequently, although significant amounts
of money are spent on planning required by
government programs, the payoff in protecting
A duck’s gentle ripples reflect autumn’s hues. The Migratory
Bird Conservation Commission has been successfully working
to acquire land for national wildlife refuges since 1929.
Darlyne A. Murawski / National Geographic Stock