Winter Wildlands Alliance is a founding member of Outdoor Alliance. For more than ten years, Outdoor Alliance has united the voices of backcountry skiers and snowshoers with paddlers, mountain bikers, hikers, surfers, and climbers to conserve America’s public lands and protect outdoor recreation experiences. Over the last decade, this coalition has helped to permanently protect 40 million acres of public land, secure $5.1 billion in funding for the outdoors, and convert more than 100,000 outdoor enthusiasts into outdoor advocates. David Page is the Executive Director at Winter Wildlands Alliance. We recently interviewed him to reflect back on ten years of conservation powered by outdoor recreation.

Can you tell us how you first got started working at Winter Wildlands Alliance, and how we work together as a coalition at Outdoor Alliance?

When I first got involved with Outdoor Alliance, I was the Advocacy Manager at Winter Wildlands Alliance (WWA). I quickly became the Advocacy Director and went from part-time to full-time, because I realized there was a ton of work to do. Part of that was jumping into the Joint Policy Shop, which was super motivational as well as being a good learning curve for me. It was a bunch of smart minds getting together once a week talking about outdoor recreation policy and conservation pretty efficiently. I was impressed with the brains in the group, and now having just done a ten year fly-in together, it’s pretty cool to see the things we’ve talked about over the years rolling off the tongues of people in high up positions in the Forest Service and in Washington D.C., and to know it is a result of our work together in the Joint Policy Shop.

I have a number of different perspectives being involved with the Outdoor Alliance, and one of them includes the more localized work we have done getting Outdoor Alliance California, one of two regional networks, up and running. But overall, making productive relationships with Forest Service leadership at the local and regional level, as well as in D.C., has been impactful. Those relationships have stood the test of time, and they have ended up being key in implementing policy.

You were in Washington D.C. when the Great American Outdoors Act passed, one of our most significant victories together. Can you tell us what that was like and how it has established us as a powerful voice and presence with lawmakers?

David Page, left alongside Outdoor Alliance coalition members

It was amazing. We didn’t think we had it, and then suddenly, it made it through after years and years of educating the outdoor recreation community about it and rallying thousands of letters in support of it. This is also what recently happened with passing the EXPLORE Act.

The Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA) was a huge success for Outdoor Alliance and its member groups. It secured guaranteed funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LCWF), addressed the maintenance backlog across parks and public lands, and now five years later, we’re working to reauthorize it. It’s been inspiring to once again help get a number of priorities passed during a lame duck session, with the EXPLORE Act, and recognizing that our past work on GAOA has positioned us to have influence in nearly every congressional office on both sides of the aisle, and we definitely have the attention of land management agencies, as well as the administration. In ten years, to have built an organization that has that kind of street credit in D.C. is super impressive.

What people don’t see is how hard we work on the language of these bills, the wrangling that has to be done to get them in a package, and how important each clause is, and how that goes back to us working on the committee level over the past five years. We’re doing this work on behalf of the outdoor recreation community, and the public, who generally has no idea how long it takes to pull together legislation. And then the thousands of letters from our members and supporters that help elevate the issues to the point they actually get a vote. Having Outdoor Alliance on the ground in D.C. makes a huge difference in achieving these successes especially for an organization like Winter Wildlands.

Engaging in forest planning has been a cornerstone of Outdoor Alliance and Winter Wildlands work together. A forest plan creates a blueprint for how each National Forest is managed, including where certain activities including outdoor recreation can happen. How has working in coalition advanced some of these plans?

One of the biggest successes we’ve had was in the Inyo National Forest, the first of a series of “early adopter” forests under the latest forest service planning rule. There were a lot of entities involved, both local and national groups, a number of conservation and recreation orgs, as well as special interest groups. I think it came out to be a fair and good plan that maps out a generation's worth of forest management, and it built a lot of trust between different user groups. We would still like to see it followed up by adequate funding and also full implementation by the Forest Service, but it laid some really good groundwork for wildfire management, sustainable recreation, and even winter travel management, which is something Winter Wildlands is very interested in.

The Travel Management Rule governs how motorized vehicles can use backcountry roads and trails on public lands. WWA has been instrumental in advocating for a winter travel planning process, one that takes steps to reduce use conflicts and ensure that high quality winter recreation opportunities exist for all users.

In 2015 the Forest Service issued what’s called the OSV Rule, requiring every unit of national forest that gets enough snow for winter recreation to go through a public process—essentially a zoning effort—to determine where motorized over-snow recreation (e.g. snowmobiling) should be allowed and where it shouldn't. In so doing, they're supposed to consider how best to minimize impacts to natural resources and wildlife, as well as conflict between motorized use and other uses (for example with nordic and backcountry skiing, or family snowplay). We're talking about 83 national forests, everywhere you could plausibly ski or snowmobile on Forest Service land. Of these, fewer than 10 have gone through the process of producing a winter recreation map to guide the public.

Our role is to make sure that non-motorized winter recreationists—skiers, snowshoers, people who just want to play in the snow with their kids—have a voice in the process. Now that the EXPLORE Act has mandated that every forest have an accurate and legal winter recreation map within ten years, we should see a lot of opportunity in the near future for folks to have a say in how their favorite public lands are managed for winter recreation.

Winter Wildlands is actively engaged with its community through programs like SnowSchool and the Backcountry Film Festival. Can you talk a bit about these two things and how public engagement also helps to move the needle on policy?

SnowSchool Gathering, Craters of the Moon

SnowSchool is a program we're super proud of. It got its start 25 years ago and has grown to about 70 places nationwide. Each year, it serves 30-40K kids and we just crossed a huge milestone—half a million kids who have participated in SnowSchool. We’ve seen some amazing success stories of kids who have done SnowSchool and now they're working as guides in the mountains, or they're in grad school working in snow science. The curriculum is STEM based, so it fits right in for K-12. Over half of all SnowSchool participants are kids from underserved communities, learning about watersheds, snow science, wintering wildlife, winter ecology, a whole range of things that kids wouldn't otherwise learn about if they didn’t have access to the mountains in winter.

The Backcountry Film Festival is a great opportunity for us to interface with and inspire folks in our communities. As backcountry skiers, we spend a lot of time alone, we go out into the Wilderness and often don't see very many people. It’s not just watching films together, there’s a lot of conversation about character driven stories, decision making and social issues, as well as a dose of adrenaline and skiing pow. This year we formed a selection committee to help us find the very best from over 400 submissions. Going through all of them is a lot of work, but it ends up being great work. Then we hit the road with it and show it to sold out audiences in over 100 locations across the country—and even in Antarctica.

Outdoor Alliance is closing out on celebrating its ten year anniversary. What do you see as we chart the path forward, and what are your predictions for achieving success and navigating challenges?

David Page speaking at WWA’s Bicentennial Conference with USFS Staff

I think we're on track, and we have built an effective machine for defending the places where we like to get outside, and for keeping public lands public. I think that’s going to be a big focal point again with this incoming administration, as it was back in 2016. I think the vision we ought to have now and for the next ten years, is rebuilding our public lands agencies to be effective at taking care of the places we care about. Congress especially has to step up with funding, and this to me is an issue that is bipartisan in nature. Our public lands are such an important piece of the American dream, and of how we work and play together in a democracy, and we should be stewarding them together.

Winter Wildlands Alliance is the first and only national organization working on behalf of backcountry skiers, snowboarders, snowshoers, winter hikers, and other outdoor adventurers, addressing national issues that impact our winter wildlands. Learn more, take action, and become a member by visiting https://winterwildlands.org/action-center/.

Finding The Line: A Journey In Advocacy With Winter Wildlands Alliance