Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Approves Legislation Supporting Outdoor Recreation

On Wednesday, May 17, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved the America’s Outdoor Recreation Act (S. 873, AORA) by a voice vote. This legislation is a comprehensive package that will expand access to outdoor recreation activities on public lands, allowing generations of Americans to participate in recreational fishing and other activities for years to come.

While the bill still has a long way to go before it becomes law, we are optimistic that its committee passage is the first step in what will be a successful outcome for the legislation.

What Will the Bill Accomplish

The bill has dozens of provisions that will streamline and expand outdoor recreation, with several aspects uniquely benefitting fishing. Below are five provisions that help recreational fishing.

Section 133. Supporting Gateway Communities – For the outdoor recreation economy to grow, the needs of gateway communities, defined as communities near America’s recreational lands and waters, must first be understood. This section would provide tools and resources to gateway communities to address challenges facing national parks and public lands like increased visitation and housing shortages, boosting visitation at lesser-known parks and recreation areas. Helping gateway communities better accommodate and redistribute visitation to avoid overcrowding at certain places and times of year will provide more quality experiences at our public lands, including for fishing.

Section 131. Broadband Internet Connectivity at Recreation Sites – This section may seem surprising, but if you’ve ever struggled to catch anything, you might go online or on social media to find nearby fishing locations. This provision instructs the Forest Service and the Department of Commerce to collaborate and encourage broadband construction at developed recreation sites. This will allow anglers to access high-speed internet and telecommunications services, helping them find fish and make changes to fishing plans more easily.

Section 144. Improved Recreational Visitation Data – While the importance of federal lands for providing fishing opportunities is generally understood, producing activity-specific data that is comparable across agencies has been a challenge. This section will require federal land management agencies to establish a single visitation data management system for public recreation. Reliable, comparable and real-time data are crucial for understanding areas of economic growth in outdoor recreation, the relative importance of federal lands for various activities, and for better managing these activities.

Section 147. Increasing Youth Recreation Visits to Federal Lands – One of ASA’s goals is to increase fishing participation among children. This section of the bill helps us reach that goal. If enacted, the Departments of Agriculture and Interior would work together to develop a national strategy to increase youth recreation on federal lands. A supermajority of anglers participate in recreational fishing before the age of 12, making this section vital to having children develop a lifelong love of the sport.

Section 404. Federal Land and Aquatic Resource Activities Assistance. Recognizing the threat that aquatic invasive species such as quagga and zebra mussels pose to aquatic ecosystems, it’s critical that federal land management agencies have the authority needed to prevent their introduction into new waterbodies while still facilitating public access. This section provides authority for inspections and decontamination of watercraft entering and leaving Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation and National Park Service sites in western states.

While those are only a few aspects of the very large bill, you can learn more about how the bill benefits sportfishing on our website, here.

What Happens Next

Now that the bill has been approved out of committee, it’s time for the full Senate to consider this legislation. Prior to that happening, Senators can show their support for the bill by cosponsoring it. Please visit Keep America Fishing and use our Action Alert to urge your Senators to cosponsor this bill!

We expect the bill to receive support in the U.S. House of Representatives, although it will likely move along a different path. Rather than moving a single package of outdoor recreation provisions from the outset, the House Natural Resources Committee plans to move individual bills that largely make up AORA in the Senate, with the hope of eventually merging them together under a single bill. On March 28, the House Natural Resources Federal Lands Subcommittee held a hearing on several bills that appear in AORA.

While nothing is easy in Congress, given the widespread support for outdoor recreation, we are hopeful that enacting AORA will be a win for Congress and the millions of Americans who visit our federal lands.