New rec group seeks community input

A new collaborative covering the northeast of Wyoming is offering the whole community an opportunity to get involved in the future of outdoor recreation in this area.

Pioneered at the state level but comprised of local stakeholders, the collaborative will collect ideas to both improve current recreational opportunities and create new ones – and then figure out how to make them happen.

“This whole thing is going to be driven by ideas,” Chris Floyd, Manager of the Wyoming Office of Outdoor Recreation.

“I have ideas for things that any community could do, but I’d rather hear from the people locally what they want to do. What would make your community more resilient and give better quality of life, and what can we do to help you with that?”

The aim of the Northeast Wyoming Outdoor Recreation Collaborative (NEWORC) is to engage the grassroots of the community.

“This is a chance for the people in these areas to have a say in the outcome of things – to control their own destiny, so to speak,” he says.

“This is how people can help drive and determine what recreation is going to look like and what their economy is going to look like in the next ten or 20 years in that part of the state. It’s very important, if they’re concerned about that, that they be engaged in this process.”

NEWORC is one of several collaboratives that are now either in the planning stages or already functioning across Wyoming. The concept sprang from the Wyoming Governor’s Outdoor Recreation Task Force report of 2017.

“There was a group of stakeholders statewide who got together to try to figure out how we could leverage outdoor recreation as one of the tools to help diversify our state’s economy. That report came out with a lot of recommendations: 59 sub-recommendations and 11 major recommendations,” says Floyd.

“One theme throughout that report was this idea of collaboration with local communities and trying to put the pieces of recreation together, because it’s so complicated – you have so many different land managers, so many different user groups, so many different interests involved and different levels of government as well. It’s complex, and in order to be successful you have to navigate that complexity.”

The goal identified from this was two-fold: to both grow the recreation economy and enhance the existing recreation opportunities.

“There are some places that are over-loved, and there are some places that could use better management – and maybe they need funding sources to help with that,” Floyd says. “Our job is to figure all that out, but we need communities to do that with us at the grassroots level.”

The best way to do this, Floyd says, was to form collaboratives all around the state, some covering a single county and others combining two or more counties into an overall region. Crook County falls into the second category, and will be joining Weston and Campbell counties to form NEWORC.

“This collaborative is really important because we know this part of the state has some challenges in terms of its economic diversification because of the coal industry,” he says. “It is what it is, we have no control over that – we’re just here to help. If we can add components to the economy that make it more resilient, that’s a good thing.”

Spearheading the effort from the Wyoming Office of Outdoor Recreation is Brynn Hirschman, Outdoor Recreation Coordinator. A steering committee has already been established for NEWORC, with Commissioner Jeanne Whalen appointed to represent Crook County’s needs and interests.

“The [representative] on the steering committee is our main person who focuses on overall recreation for that county,” says Hirschman.

The next stage will be to invite representatives to form the collaborative itself from across the area and from across the recreational opportunities and involved agencies in this part of the state.

“We try to be as diverse as possible and represent as many different interest groups as we can,” says Floyd.

The collaborative will aim to bring to the table both motorized and non-motorized opportunities, including specific interest groups such as rock climbers and mountain bikers, Floyd continues. Hunting and fishing, wildlife and conservation interests are also on the list to be represented, as well as business owners, chambers of commerce and tourism organizations and agencies including BLM, State Lands and the U.S. Forest Service.

“There’s always opportunity for public comment, either formally or informative,” he says. “The way we move forward in these collaboratives is by a consensus decision-making process.”

The aim, he says, is to be able to show that people from across the spectrum of recreation and other stakeholders are all in support of the ideas that the collaborative come up with. For example, if the group wants to build a trail across BLM land, it can approach the bureau with a proposal that has widespread backing and can then create a subcommittee to figure out how exactly to make the trail happen, solving problems ranging from obtaining permits to finding volunteer assistance.

The advantage of the collaborative can sometimes be at its most obvious when it comes to that process of figuring out how to do things, Floyd says. For example, an idea for a trail system can be stymied if it crosses two different land ownerships with completely different rules, such as State Lands and the BLM, but things get much easier to solve when you already have everyone at the table.

Where do these ideas come from in the first place? Again, it’s the grassroots, says Floyd.

“We’re not coming in and telling people what to do,” he explains. “We’re listening to what they want to do and we’re trying to make that happen.”

Ideas may come from members of the collaborative, or they may come from members of the community.

“Projects can be anywhere from trails to climbing routes to motorized or non-motorized play areas to solving access issues,” he says.

It might also include the “nuts and bolts” components of the overall visitor experience, he says, including advertising less well-known recreational sites to attract more visitation.

For instance, maybe there’s already a great destination available but not much signage to help people find it, or perhaps there’s no information about the site itself once a visitor has arrived, whether that’s the natural or historic points of interest or something as simple as where to find a bathroom.

The next meeting has been scheduled for September 27 from 4:40 to 6:30 p.m. at the Moorcroft Fire Hall, says Hirschman. As with all of the collaborative’s meetings, it will be open to the public.

Hirschman says she would love to hear from anyone with expertise or interest in outdoor rec from this area. Contact her at [email protected] to provide your information and share your interest in contributing to the collaborative’s efforts.

While it’s still early in the process, Hirschman says she welcomes ideas from the public for projects for the collaborative to consider.