The demand for both close-to-home and regional outdoor recreation opportunities has never been greater. While that’s good news for the outdoor economy, it’s also putting pressure on an industry workforce that is already struggling with chronic skill-gaps and a retirement wave. By uniting around a new vision of workforce development, the outdoor recreation industry can capture the full opportunity.

A Conversation with Chris Perkins and Cailin O'Brien-Feeney Last year, we partnered with Outdoor Recreation Roundtable (ORR) to produce a Rural Development Toolkit to help rural communities build a recreation economy that supports local aspirations. To dig a little more deeply into both the new toolkit in the context of Oregon’s rural communities, we recently sat down with ORR’s researcher, Chris.