Join us, Monday, June 14th at 1pm, for an engaging panel discussion featuring outdoor industry leaders and alumni from OSU and its Center for the Outdoor Recreation Economy’s inaugural Outdoor Industry Leadership cohort. If you’re a rising professional who’s ready to step into your own as a leader in the outdoor recreation economy—or if you’re looking for a meaningful professional development.

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.

We're excited to announce that the Outdoor Recreation Economy Initiative (OREI) is now a full "Center" within Oregon State University.

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.

For Hilary Sager, Destination Development Manager with Travel Oregon, leadership is about rising to the moment, no matter what your title may be. In this time of social justice reckoning, that means asking big questions about how recreation and tourism can be part of creating a more equitable world.

With the passage of the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA), the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) now has a guaranteed source for $900 million in mandatory annual funding for outdoor recreation and conservation projects across the nation. That’s great news, but it also raises big questions about the best way to invest those much-needed funds. The Outdoor Recreation Roundtable (ORR).

Zavier Borja’s capstone project for OREI’s inaugural Leadership program didn’t just build on his already impressive leadership skills—it also helped school kids in Bend rebuild connections to the outdoors that had been lost in the COVID shutdown.

This year has been full of twists and turns. We've made progress anyway.

In partnership with the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable (ORR), we have been surveying the industry since April and aggregating data to measure the impacts of COVID-19 on the recreation economy as a whole. Our most recent findings tell the story of an impressive, if still fragile, recovery.

After struggling through nearly two weeks of devastating fires and a thick blanket of smoke, rains finally brought a measure of relief late last week. Now comes the work of grappling with the damage. This New York Times feature article, which draws from an interview with OREI executive director, Lee Davis, explores the impact of Oregon's natural resources economy.