2024 Northern Forest Outdoor Recreation Symposium

Building Regional Capacity that is Representative, Resilient, and Responsible

May 14-15, 2024

The Northern Forest Center and the Northern Border Regional Commission are jointly hosting the 2024 Northern Forest Outdoor Recreation Symposium to convene leaders from across the region to learn, strategize, and build capacity for a representative, resilient, and responsible outdoor recreation sector that delivers sustainable economic and community benefits across the Northern Forest region of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York.

You can view the event agenda here.

The Promise of Outdoor Recreation

Since the inaugural Northern Forest Outdoor Recreation Symposium in 2018, the sector has grown in importance to the region’s economy, with impacts benefiting rural communities and a wide range of businesses including a growing products manufacturing sector.

Communities are embracing the health and educational benefits recreation offers residents.
Access to outdoor recreation is increasingly important to business and job recruitment.
New state Offices of Outdoor Recreation are working to maximize the benefits of the sector.
Funding is available from state and federal agencies like the Northern Border Regional Commission.

Challenges facing the Outdoor Recreation Sector

The pandemic was a shock to an already dynamic sector – creating, exacerbating, and highlighting systemic challenges.

Increased visitation is stressing recreational infrastructure, and the capacity of the communities, businesses, and non-profits supporting the outdoor sector.
Workforce challenges are making it hard for businesses and communities to benefit from growth.
Increasingly tangible impacts of climate change are pressuring natural systems and the landscape.
The sector is grappling with how to increase diversity and representation.

The 2024 Symposium: A regional take

A well-coordinated and supported regional strategy can bring scale, efficiency, and profile to efforts by Northern Forest communities and businesses as they work to build a vibrant and sustainable outdoor recreation sector. The 2024 Symposium will convene over 150 leaders from across the region over two days at the Mt Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, NH and provide a unique forum in which leaders from across the region are able to:

Connect and learn from practitioner experts with access to information, tools, and relationships that can propel innovation and positive change.
Share creative efforts from across the region and beyond to expand participation, address challenges, and secure community benefits from the outdoor recreation economy.
Take stock of progress and explore trends, risks, and opportunities in the outdoor recreation economy.
Generate a shared vision and strategy that can be applied at the local, state, and regional levels to position outdoor recreation as a vital and integrated component of the Northern Forest economy.

Regional Input

The event agenda is guided by a steering committee of state outdoor recreation offices, the outdoor recreation industry and others to ensure that it will speak to the current and pressing issues facing the sector today.