USDANEWS VOLUME 55 NO. 6 - JULY 1996

More Americans than ever are heading outdoors this summer--to camp, swim, fish, hunt, raft, birdwatch, or just walk in the woods. Two-thirds of our citizens participate in outdoor recreational activities each year, and the two fastest growing outdoor activities, according to a national survey, are hiking--up 93 percent in recent years--and backpacking--up 73 percent in the same period.

Most Americans are doing all this hiking and backpacking and camping and boating on their own lands, too, although they might not think about it that way. The United States is blessed with the largest base of publicly owned land of any country in the world. The federal government doesn't own this land; federal agencies, like our own Forest Service, are simply entrusted with its care. The American people own this land.

Most Americans don't think of USDA when they think of outdoor recreation, other than maybe a vague connection between the Department and the food in their packs and the cotton shirts on their backs. But USDA's largest group of employees--the 4 out of 10 who work for the Forest Service--have nothing to do with food and fiber production. They have nothing to do with some of our other big responsibilities, such as food assistance or rural housing or foreign trade.

Instead, they operate an outdoor wonderland as big as Texas and Louisiana put together.

USDA--not Walt Disney--is the largest supplier of outdoor recreation facilities in America. Our Forest Service manages 191 million acres in 43 states. This includes thousands of miles of hiking trails, scenic byways, and wild and scenic rivers, as well as picnic areas, trailheads, boat ramps, and campgrounds. We can accommodate 1.8 million visitors at one time. We get close to a billion each year. Projections show this will increase by 50 percent within the next 50 years.

By comparison, in 1994 Walt Disney World--the largest private recreational venue--hosted 40 million visitors.

As demands for recreational activities on public lands grow, so do environmental demands. My goal as manager of this country's national forests is to sustain all the goods and services that come from those lands: outdoor recreation venues, clean water and fishable streams, wildlife and healthy rangelands, and timber and mineral sources. That's why the Forest Service has put more money into recreation programs than ever before.

USDA manages most of the wilderness areas in the lower 48 states, protects more big game habitat than any other land "owner," and manages the headwaters for most of the waterways that provide clean water and fishing opportunities in the West. Downstream, those same waterways flow across private lands where they feed drinking water into our cities, supply irrigation water for farms, and provide shipping channels for industry.

Outdoor recreational activities on public lands are clearly good for the body and the soul. Playing outdoors also stimulates the local and national economy. Americans spend $300 billion a year on outdoor recreation, and that is a big chunk of the $430 billion travel and tourism industry in the United States.

Eleven million Americans have jobs either directly or indirectly related to travel and tourism, the industry creates jobs at twice the rate of the rest of the economy, and is among the top three employers in 34 states.

When people think about how our National Forests contribute to the economy, they think most often about timber, and that's important. By the year 2000, it is projected that timber activities on our National Forests will produce a $3.5 billion contribution to the gross domestic product.

But by that time, recreation activities on our National Forests will be generating nearly 30 times that amount--almost $100 billion!

All on "our" land. ¤

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