Outdoor Recreation Roundtable Celebrates Outdoors Act Milestones

Outdoor Recreation Roundtable (ORR), the country’s leading outdoor recreation coalition, in partnership with the USDA Forest Service, Department of the Interior (DOI) and a diverse range of outdoor recreation partners, joined together yesterday to discuss implementation of the most important outdoor recreation legislation in the 21^st century – the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA).

Participants celebrated the two major accomplishments of GAOA: the full funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) and the creation of the Legacy Restoration Fund (LRF) to address the $12 billion deferred maintenance backlog across America’s public lands and waters. Both DOI and USDA Forest Service have made significant progress in implementing LRF in its inaugural year.

• The USDA Forest Service and DOI have identified over a thousand vital infrastructure improvement projects outdoor recreationists rely on, such as campgrounds, roads, bridges, visitor centers, parking lots, trails, water and electrical systems, and more
• Over 150 campground-related projects are being worked on in the first year alone
• DOI is rolling out 165 deferred maintenance projects and an investment of $1.6 billion to improve infrastructure in National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges, Recreation Areas, and deferred maintenance needs at the Bureau of Indian Education schools
• 63 additional DOI projects proposed for FY22 totaling over $1.5 billion in investment
• The USDA Forest Service anticipates $1.4 billion in investments to address backlog over the five years of this authority
• In FY 2021, $285 million in projects are being invested throughout the national forest system in 40 states and Puerto Rico