EXPLORE Act signed into law

Congress gave the American people a long-sought gift before the holidays: a new law that dramatically improves access to public lands recreation.

The Expanding Public Lands Outdoor Recreation Experiences (EXPLORE) Act includes numerous provisions aimed at modernizing recreational facilities and infrastructure, reduce paperwork burdens associated with outdoor play on federal lands and waters, and take on inconveniences associated with outdoor diversion that include housing shortages, and parking availability.

“It’s as simple as this – in Colorado, the preservation of our public lands and the strength of our outdoor recreation economy is not only integral to the spirit of our state but to the success of our people,” U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, who represents Estes Park in Congress, said after the Senate passed the bill in December.

Among other objectives, the EXPLORE Act will modernize and harmonize permitting processes run by different land management agencies, facilitate the construction of trails for individuals with disabilities, and establish a set of rules for rock climbing in units of the National Wilderness Preservation System.

Additionally, the act will give priority to investment in outdoor natural areas in geographic areas that have not had equitable access to them, identify and facilitate construction of ten long distance biking trails, allow for shooting ranges, and promote use of public lands and waters by armed forces veterans and active duty military members.

Children will benefit from the law’s extension of the popular Every Kid Outdoors program, which provides free national park passes to fourth graders and their families.

So will aficionados of YouTube, since the EXPLORE Act will now allow groups of fewer than six people to use hand-held devices to film on public lands without a permit if they do not obstruct uses by other visitors.

Because the new law commands improvement of Internet access and cellular telephone service in national parks, those videos could even possibly be uploaded even before leaving the place of play.

Other parts of the law mandate construction of electrical vehicle charging stations at recreation area parking facilities and additional electricity-ready campsites. And tribal nations will now have a pathway to obtain conservation funding from the federal government.

Even housing is impacted by the law, which authorizes the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service to lease unneeded administrative sites for affordable housing needs.

Chris Winter, the executive director at the University of Colorado Law School’s Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment emphasized that, for all of the EXPLORE Act’s capacity to improve recreational access to public lands, it will not negatively affect protection of environmental qualities.

“The EXPLORE Act does a lot of things for recreation on public lands, but it really doesn’t change any of the foundational laws like the Wilderness Act or the organic acts for the land management agencies,” Winter said.

He also explained that the National Park Service will continue to have the capability to assure natural values in designated wilderness within Rocky Mountain National Park.

“There’s a couple of different provisions that could potentially affect the way that the Park Service is managing activities in Wilderness Areas, but it certainly doesn’t lessen the protections for wilderness,” he said. “It doesn’t limit the ability of the park service to set appropriate use levels to protect wilderness character.”

The EXPLORE Act will also not change the requirements that commercial outfitters obtain permits for their profit-driven activities. It may even increase the possibility that the public gains greater awareness of commercial recreation activities on public lands.

“One of the things that is part of the EXPLORE Act is more transparency in the permitting process for special recreation permits,” Winter said. “So the agencies are supposed to publish information to the public and to the guided outfitting community about the special recreation permits issued and how the fees are used.”

Winter believes the EXPLORE Act is not only a significant development for what it actually does, but about what it says about attitudes about how the public lands should be used. The contrast between extractive uses, such as grazing, lumbering, and mining, and recreation “was very much a driving force behind the EXPLORE Act,” he said. “And that’s connected to our broader realization that outdoor recreation is not only good for rural communities, but rural economies and rural development.”

The new law will likely strengthen an industry that affects at least 175 million people, has a $1.2 trillion impact on the national economy, and supports the employment of at least five million people.

And it will be particularly important in Colorado, where the economic impact of outdoor recreation is considerable. According to a September 2024 report by Colorado Parks and Wildlife, it accounts for $65.8 billion of the state’s gross domestic product and more than 404,000 jobs.

“[O]utdoor recreation is very popular among Colorado residents, with an estimated 3.8 million adults (85% of adult residents) having engaged in at least one of the 30 activities in 2023,” the report concluded. Outdoor recreation also contributes $11.2 billion in tax revenue to the state and local governments.

“This is an important inflection point. We must modernize, preserve, and increase access to the public lands and waterways – regardless of where someone lives or works – and support more than five million employees who help drive our industry forward,” said Kent Ebersole, the chief executive officer of the Boulder-based Outdoor Industry Association.

Winter noted that implementation of the EXPLORE Act “risks potential impacts to natural resource values like wildlife habitat and water quality, not to mention the experiences of other users.”

“Absolutely, the federal agencies need to be very careful in how to manage outdoor recreation and that relates specifically to things like tracking the impacts of human use, the number of people out on the landscape, the number of permits issued to commercial guides, the impact on wilderness areas,” he continued. “Those are all really important things for the federal land management agencies to take into account.”

The Senate passed the measure by unanimous consent in December and it was signed into law on Jan. 4 by President Joe Biden.

Listen to story on the EVV Podcast here: