This past week I had the opportunity to attend a Recreation Management Conference for the state of Wyoming Outdoor Rec Planners. I attended this instead of the training at Chicago Botanic Garden, as I had previously attended it. Also, since my internship is not botany based, this gave me an opportunity to attend a related training.

The conference had speakers from within the BLM as well as outside speakers. The BLM speakers talked about a variety of subjects including cave management, wilderness study areas (WSAs), law enforcement, recreation management information system (RMIS), and other recreation practices. The outside speakers spoke about subjects such as the Tread Lightly program, off-highway vehicle use and trail design, as well as the socioeconomic effect recreation has on the surrounding community. It was great to see how people from within the government as well as outside sources come together to improve recreation for everyone.

Another part of the conference that was beneficial was when all of the field offices had a chance to share some of their accomplishments as well as some of their challenges. This gave me an opportunity to see some of the real-life things affecting rec planners. As a person not having a lot of recreation experience, this was a way for me to understand more of what a rec planner does. Many of the rec planners in the state of Wyoming are fairly new at their position, so many of their questions were the same questions that I had and it was a great way to learn from the rec planners who have been in their position a lot longer.

Overall, this was also a great way to get a crash-course education in many of the tools I will be working with this coming summer. It will help me be able to do my job more efficiently as I will not have to have so much time training. It also gave me a great way to network with other rec planners that I can connect with if I have questions or need help with anything. I also got to explore a part of the state that I had never been to before, which is a neat experience.

That’s all for now, hoping to get out and do some field work soon, but that might be difficult as they are forecasting 7 inches of snow for today!

AZ

BLM Rawlins Field Office