By DAVID RAINER, Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources

The inaugural Outdoor Recreation Summit was recently held at Lake Guntersville State Park, where more than 200 attendees discussed how to share Alabama’s natural wonders with the rest of the nation and world.

Alabama Governor Kay Ivey established the Alabama Innovation Commission in 2020, and its goals included highlighting the many assets Alabama has to offer in recruiting businesses, manufacturers, entrepreneurs and other talent to our great state.

Innovate Alabama is the offshoot of the Commission, which commissioned a study about what makes Alabama special. The report from Stanford University’s Hoover Institution stated that Alabama’s great outdoors and related educational and recreational opportunities need to be at the top of the promotion priority list. 

The Council on Outdoor Recreation, chaired by Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources’ (ADCNR) Commissioner Chris Blankenship, was formed to showcase Alabama’s natural beauty and its nation-leading ecosystem diversity.

“The Inaugural Outdoor Recreation Summit was fantastic,’ said Commissioner Blankenship. “Having this Summit was one of the main goals from the Innovate Outdoor Recreation Council. We have so many organizations, cities, and groups building trails and managing outdoor rec in their communities. It is so impressive when we aggregate all the opportunities from all over the state. We knew if we could get us all together, we could learn from each other and get a full picture of what everyone else was doing.

“The relationships and contacts that were made and the hours of good conservations will lead to even more collaboration and expansion of outdoor recreation opportunities in Alabama. The overarching goal is to use outdoor recreation and the natural beauty and resources God has so richly blessed us with in Alabama to attract and retain talent and grow businesses in Alabama. This first Summit went a long way toward meeting that goal!”

T.C. McLemore, Innovate Alabama’s Executive Director of Outdoor Recreation Programs, said the Summit was a chance to bring together a group of people to discuss the pillars of the program.

“There were three tracks offered,” McLemore said. “One was the practitioners track intended for communities, nonprofits and state agencies who are on the ground, investing in outdoor recreation assets across the state. It was also intended for communities who don’t exactly know where to start in terms of planning and building out outdoor recreational infrastructure. We had concurrent sessions with speakers and panels from communities across the state that are doing good work.

“The second track was aspiring entrepreneurs. It was essentially intended to be a founder boot camp where aspiring entrepreneurs could task and hone business ideas for outdoor recreation startups in the state. It was held by Founded Outdoors, a national organization that works with outdoor rec entrepreneurs.”

The third track was for college students from across the state, and those students got a great deal of hands-on experience during the events. The schools represented were University of Alabama, University of Alabama-Huntsville, Alabama A&M and UAB.

“The student track was more experiential,” McLemore said. “They went outside with DCNR staff to talk about different activities in the outdoors. They participated in archery. They learned about careers in DCNR. They had a nature hike. They went out with SORBA (Southern Offroad Biking Association). They talked about trail stewardship. The second day, they went paddling on the lake with the Tennessee RiverLine, a multi-state project connecting communities along the river from Paducah, Kentucky, to Knoxville, Tennessee, obviously covering all of north Alabama.”

Shannon Allen, Innovate Alabama’s HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) Engagement Program Director, joined the students on the adventures at Lake Guntersville.

“We had 10 students across a variety of majors,” Allen said. “A couple of the students are interested in becoming economic developers as a career. It was kind of cool, too, that they were not just attracted to the outdoors but as future practitioners as well.”

The paddling adventure on beautiful Lake Guntersville is something Allen will likely never forget.

“We went paddling in the pouring rain,” she said. “I got rain in places I didn’t know you could get rain in. I also found out that raincoats can soak through. I never knew that. I’ve never sat in the pouring rain for that long. But it was a great experience.”

Allen said the individual instruction from ADCNR staff is an aspect of the Summit the students relished.

“One important aspect, say archery for instance, we had some great folks there from DCNR who not only taught us about archery but taught about the landscape, the trees and the animals we might encounter,” she said. “Not only were they able to have those fun experiences, but they were able to learn about the natural ecosystem that surrounded them. They were also exposed to a variety of lifestyle organizations in the state, but then being exposed to a summit of this nature and being able to attend those sessions that discussed best practices, I think it instilled more in the students about how invested we are as a state in creating a place for them to work and play. I really think that is the message they walked away with. We were with 200 other people, and every one of the people there were amplifying what an incredible place for people like us.”

McLemore said the Summit came together around keynotes that included Commissioner Blankenship, Chad Scroggins and Amy Sturdivant from Shelby County, Whitney Potter Schwartz from Outdoor Recreation Roundtable and Brandy Horton from Rails to Trails Conservancy.

“We’ve had overwhelming positive response from everybody I talked to,” McLemore said of the Summit. “They got a lot out of it in terms of content. The practitioners’ track was really intended to showcase things that are working well along a continuum of outdoor rec assets, from asset mapping to planning to funding to shovel-ready projects as well as long-term stewardship. We covered all the ground that it takes to really invest and maintain outdoor rec infrastructure. I think communities that are looking to invest more in outdoor rec got a lot of practical takeaways from those conversations and sessions.”

In addition to enjoying the outdoor adventures, McLemore said the students loved seeing a state that cares about them and their quality of life through outdoor recreation. The entrepreneurs, meanwhile, enjoyed sharing ideas and potential markets with other entrepreneurs.

“The biggest bits of feedback were the networking and potential partnerships that came out of the Summit,” McLemore said. “This was a convenient moment for folks to come together and talk about what’s working and what’s not working in their communities across the state. That’s something Innovate Alabama wants to see, especially with our network program. We really get communities working with each other to accelerate their work, be it innovation and entrepreneurship to outdoor recreation.”

The Alabama Tourism Department declared this year as the “Year of Alabama Trails,” which kicked off with an event recently at Vulcan Park in Birmingham. Alabama has such an abundance of trails that the promotion will run two years, through 2026. Alabama has 500 miles in Alabama State Parks and close to 400 additional miles in Forever Wild Land Trust, which is also managed by ADCNR.

“When we talk about outdoor recreation, a lot of that ends up on a trail,” McLemore said. “When you look at hiking, mountain biking, birding, kayaking and canoeing, a lot of that falls under trail access across the state. The majority of our programming touches on if not focuses on trails.”

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