On Saturday, January 4, President Joe Biden signed the Expanding Public Lands Outdoor Recreation Experiences (EXPLORE) Act into law. The new legislation rolls a dozen or so existing outdoor recreation-relation initiatives into one policy, which includes approval of building long-distance bike trails, the protection of rock climbing anchors in wilderness areas, and a more efficient permit process for guiding companies.
The EXPLORE Act is focused on federal public land like national parks, national forests, and areas overseen by the Bureau of Land Management. It directs the various management agencies to improve and develop new parking lots, broadband networks, accessible infrastructure, firing ranges, and restrooms at recreation sites. It also calls for improved coordination between different federal and state agencies to contain the spread of aquatic invasive species like zebra mussels.
“It will help create more fun all across the country,” Republican Congressman Bruce Westerman from Arkansas, the bill’s sponsor, Colorado Public Radio when it passed the senate.
The legislation also puts to rest a simmering problem within the rock climbing community by officially sanctioning the use of bolts as fixed anchors in wilderness areas. This became an issue earlier in 2024 when some public areas proposed bans on permanent safety anchors in national parks and national forests. “Passing this bill in a single legislative session is a testament to the growing power of the climbing advocacy movement,” Heather Thorne, executive director of the nonprofit Access Fund, . “In the years to come, I hope our federal leaders continue to work together to protect public lands, the agencies that manage those lands, and sustainable climbing access, which enjoys broad, bipartisan support from legislators and climbers across the nation.”
Also cause for celebration among some segments of the outdoors community: a simpler, more streamlined process for guiding companies to get permits.
The EXPLORE Act includes measures to help address the housing crisis in gateway communities, such as investing in more public-private partnerships. It also reauthorizes the Forest Service to use administrative buildings as housing.
Several sections of the new law are devoted to increasing access to the outdoors, for veterans, young people, disabled people, and members of underserved communities. It renews the Every Kid Outdoors Act, a program started under President Obama that grants every fourth grader in the U.S. and their family free entry to all national parks and federal public lands for a year.
In addition to installing broadband at federal recreation sites, the act directs public land managers to modernize administrative processes, calling on the national parks to develop a digital America the Beautiful pass. It also introduces a pilot program to improve the accuracy of visitation data, particularly for historically hard-to-document activities such as dispersed camping.
“Today’s passage of the EXPLORE Act will supercharge the outdoor recreation industry and is a victory for our economy, our communities, our quality of life, and our shared connection to the outdoors,” Jessica Wahl Turner, president of the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable, said in when the senate approved the bill on December 19. “By advancing this transformative legislation, Congress has shown its commitment to ensuring every American has access to world-class outdoor experiences, from our backyard to the backcountry, while supporting the businesses, workers, and communities who make those experiences possible.”
The new legislation had bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress. Outdoor policy has become a common ground for lawmakers and advocates from both parties, like the bipartisan grassroots opposition that sprung up against a plan to build golf courses and hotels in several Florida state parks this summer.
For the Biden administration, the EXPLORE Act boosts and helps solidify an already robust environmental record. The outgoing president designated seven new national monuments and expanded others during his term. In 2022, he reestablished the Federal Interagency Council on Outdoor Recreation (FICOR), a group dedicated to making the outdoors more accessible to a greater number of people. The America the Beautiful initiative boosted conservation efforts across government agencies, and his administration frequently engaged with tribal partners in decisionmaking about their ancestral lands.