Hillary Clinton's New Plan To Double "OUTDOOR ECONOMY" Over Next 10 Years

On June 1st Hillary Clinton released a Six Point Plan that intends on doubling the “outdoor economy” over the next 10 years. With all the political posturing leading up to the California primaries by the candidates and the talking heads, you don’t hear much about plans for our nation’s precious outdoor resources. As with any initiatives of this scale, the details are complicated and rely on an unconfirmable sequence of events, but this is politics….

Hillary’s 6 Point Plan:

Set a goal of doubling the size of the outdoor economy within 10 years, creating millions of new jobs and up to $700 billion dollars in new annual economic activity;

Celebrate the 100^thanniversary of our country’s national park system – America’s “best idea” – by establishing an American Parks Trust Fund to scale up and modernize how we protect and enhance our country’s great outdoors;
Launch an initiative to restore and revitalize more than 3000 city parks within ten years;

Make public lands an engine of our clean energy economy through a ten-fold increase in renewable energy production on public lands and waters within ten years;

Expand access to public lands for hunting, fishing and recreation by making publicly accessible 50% of the public land that is currently inaccessible;

Combat our national water challenges, including through a new Water Innovation Lab and a Western Water Partnership.

Here’s how she identifies One Aspect of the problem:

“America’s system of national parks and public lands is the envy of the world. Our national parks, national forests, national seashores, wildlife refuges and other public lands host more than 407 million visits every year. But America’s parks – national, state, and local – are falling into disrepair and facing new pressures. Though they are more popular than ever, our national parks have an $11.5 billion maintenance backlog of aging roads, visitor centers, and infrastructure that need to be modernized, and the park system itself does not sufficiently include cultural and historic sites that reflect the diversity of our country.”

This is how she says she will fix that problem:

“Clinton will work with Congress to establish a new trust with the mission of helping to expand local, state, and national recreation opportunities, rehabilitate existing parks, and enhancing America’s great outdoors – from our forests and coasts to neighborhood parks. This trust fund will replace, expand the scope of, and provide funding at roughly double the authorized level of the Land and Water Conservation Fund to address infrastructure needs, reduce the maintenance backlog in national parks, forests, and public lands and more.”

When you read through the entirety of the her 3,000 word pledge…some of it seems like grandiose political gibber gabber that would be typical in an election cycle to generate interest with no real intention of follow through but some of the points seemed more concrete, things she might actually be held to if elected especially items like these:

“Ensure that we protect those areas where development is simply not worth the risk.As in the Arctic Ocean, where oil and gas development is simply too risky to be pursued, there are some places that are better left untouched.”

It would be difficult to make a U-turn on a stance like that.

You are encouraged to read through Hillary Clinton’s Plan for Conservation and Collaborative Stewardship of America’s Great Outdoors yourself and come to your own conclusions but we are happy to bring attention to issues like this before such an important presidential race.