Introducing Outdoor Alliance's Newest Board Member

We’re thrilled to introduce Outdoor Alliance’s newest board member, Lindsey Davis. Lindsey is the Vice President of the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable (ORR), America’s leading coalition of recreation trade associations and businesses working. ORR educates decision makers and the public on policies that conserve public lands and waterways, and enhance infrastructure to improve the experience of outdoor enthusiasts everywhere. Lindsey is a hunter, angler, and volunteer citizen scientist, and advocates for uniting different outdoor recreation user groups around issues of access, wildlife management, and habitat protection. Lindsey sat down with us to answer a few questions:

We’re so excited to have you on the Outdoor Alliance Board of Directors. What initially drew you to a partnership with Outdoor Alliance?

I found Outdoor Alliance’s website when I first moved to Utah, and was researching environmental issues around the state and stumbled upon some super helpful infographics about public lands issues. They were so slick and high quality that I had to know more, so I researched the organization, and convinced Tania to meet me at the next Outdoor Retailer Show! We started working together to activate more outdoorspeople, and the rest is history.

Stepping back, how did you first start getting involved in conservation work? Was there a moment you realized you had to/wanted to step up?

When I was 11, I traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico with my grandmother and her art students. It was the first time I experienced real poverty and environmental degradation. I came back aware of my privilege and thankful for clean drinking water and wild places. I got involved in community projects throughout my teens, to then pursued a degree in International Development in college. I got my first job in advocacy when I was 18, working for a non-profit called Wildcoast, focusing on bi-national coastal conservation in the US and Mexico. After that, I spent the next decade working in the non-profit and education sectors. I’ve always been an outdoorswoman, and in the last 5 years or so, I’ve realized more than ever how much we have to learn as a recreation community about our impact in the ecosystem, and as an economic power. I feel very lucky to be able to work in the outdoor industry around these key interests.

What are the biggest challenges you think we are facing as a conservation movement?

Our industry is at a pivotal moment for many reasons. It is more clear than ever that we’ve got major work to do when it comes to making the outdoors safe and truly accessible to everyone. As Outdoor Alliance has put so well – the history of our public lands, includes racial discrimination, displacement of indigenous communities, and segregation. These things cannot define the future of public lands activism. It is our job, right now, to change how we operate. Without that, our hard work against energy dominance, habitat fragmentation and development, won’t mean nearly as much.

More people than ever want to enjoy the outdoors right now. I hope we can be organized enough in how we educate ourselves, the greater outdoor community, and policy makers to make sure the right legislation is in place to protect our wild places, support the growing economic impact of our sector, and create access to the outdoors for people and in communities where it has clearly been lacking.

Can you talk about the opportunities you see for collaboration between the motorized community, the hunting and angling community, and the human-powered recreation community?

More and more, I don’t see these as separate communities. To me, most people cross-over, have friends that do different things, or family members that diversify what they personally identify with. I think the silos we talk about aren’t as strict as we originally thought. That said, there is tribalism in the outdoors. Respect and compassion for those that enjoy things differently than you is the number one thing to fix, and that’s on us. We also have a lot of work to do with recreation infrastructure to make sure different user groups have what they need to enjoy the outdoors and we aren’t setting them up to clash!

What issues do you hope you’ll be able to tackle with Outdoor Alliance in the coming year? How do you think coronavirus will change the landscape for conservation this year?

With Covid-19 tanking our economy, it’s looking pretty dire for non-profits and other groups that depend on funding from grants and donors. However, we have an incredible opportunity to get legislation passed with the Great American Outdoors Act, which could be the most impactful funding for public lands and infrastructure since the great depression. I’m really hoping we see the outdoors prioritized in the next stimulus package, allowing us to rebuild and even better version of what we know to be the outdoor industry. Outdoor Alliance has always done an incredible job of keeping user groups informed, and I hope to continue to be a part of that strength and activating and uniting recreationalists.