A trail near Moab could help shape the future of accessible public lands
by Kevin Lind deseret news · KSL.comKEY TAKEAWAYS
- The BLM's 'All Americans Outside' initiative aims to enhance public land accessibility.
- Focus includes disability access, educational opportunities and volunteer offerings nationwide.
- Utah's Moab site highlights the initiative with a new accessible trail project.
MOAB — Just weeks after Steve Pearce was sworn in as director of the Bureau of Land Management this past May, he traveled to Grand Junction, Colorado — the agency's brief, former national headquarters — for a roundtable discussion with two presidential cabinet members.
Pearce met with his boss, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy. The focus of the day was not necessarily public lands, but rather the relationship between time spent in nature and personal health.
"Both (Burgum and Kennedy) were saying that the outdoors are a source of mental, physical, and spiritual health," Pearce recalled in an interview with Deseret News, "and that we should really concentrate on it."
To help folks take advantage of nature's health benefits, Pearce said that Burgum voiced an intention to provide full public access to 99% of the 245 million acres the BLM manages.
Unlike national parks or some U.S. Forest Service land, much of the BLM's territory lacks the larger infrastructure many outdoor enthusiasts might expect on federal land. There are not always bathrooms, significant trail markers or well-established and easy-to-walk trails. It's also often unclear if pre-existing leases even allow folks traveling through various parcels to be there. Pearce recalled that sense of accidentally being in a spoken-for tract of land as feeling like "itchiness."
But, Pearce said, opening access was not the only thing Burgum intended. He told Pearce he also wanted to make sure people with disabilities could enjoy BLM lands. To do so would be a massive effort, but Pearce supported it wholeheartedly.
"My brother's been in a wheelchair since his youth. He had an oil field accident when he was in college, and so I've watched an entire life of people not having access to this wholeness that's available in nature," Pearce said. "And so I didn't need much encouragement."
As a result of that meeting and those clear intentions, Pearce and several other Utah BLM officials went to Moab, Utah, on National Public Lands Day this past weekend to announce the agency's newest initiative called All Americans Outside.
What is the new BLM initiative?
All Americans Outside is a "nationwide initiative to help more Americans, regardless of ability, enjoy their public lands," reads the press release. The focus is on creating better access so that more people — particularly those with disabilities as well as veterans — can get outside and experience the country's vast access to nature.
The BLM describes four ways to take part: explore, learn, serve, and work. That is to say, it intends to expand options for more people to enjoy the lands; develop access to more educational opportunities within the landscapes; bolster volunteer offerings; and share more information about career options for young people.
"Where we're going with that is just increasing the awareness and the access to those recreation opportunities for people of all abilities and ages," said Christina Price, the acting BLM Utah state director.
"So that may be something like a paved trail for certain folks, or it may be a trail that's wide enough to provide for an electric assist tricycle for folks that need three wheels instead of two, or it could be anything in between."
To begin, each state is encouraged to ensure that there are at least three locations with handicap accessibility as soon as possible. For now, they've created a map where folks can see which locations have disability accommodations.
At its core though, the program takes its cues from those initial conversations in Grand Junction. It's based on the premise that outdoor recreation and time in nature is a means to support personal health and wellness.
"Everybody's got a different entry point into what accessibility means to them. Some it's going to be hunting, some fishing, some whatever," Pearce said. "Recreation is not only huge for Utah, but it's also a very important part of lifestyle ... Let's find our way outdoors and we'll find restoration there."
The Outdoor Recreation Roundtable, a coalition of outdoor recreation companies and trade organizations, wholeheartedly supports this sentiment and has worked to make access to nature a more established part of the nation's health conversations.
"Science tells us that time outdoors delivers health outcomes that no clinical or indoor intervention can fully replicate," said Jessica Turner, Outdoor Recreation Roundtable president. "People of all abilities should have access to this vital public health solution, and we look forward to supporting BLM's efforts to make that possible."
Why did the program launch in Utah?
Aside from what Pearce called "the scenic wonder of the place," Utah officials made a clear case that Utah was the best place to mark the occasion.
Around the time of the meeting in Grand Junction, Pearce just happened to be in Utah and was explaining the idea for the initiative to Price, the state's acting BLM director.
"I had the good fortune of telling the state director that we were going to initiate a handicap access, going to cut a ribbon somewhere and she said, 'You need to do it here. You need to do it at Lions Gate,'" Pearce said. "Thankfully, I took her opinion because I'd never been to this Moab area."
Price suggested Lions Park because of an ongoing effort called the Colorado River Gap Trail Project. The BLM and Utah are building a multiple-use pathway — for bikes, walkers, wheelchairs — along state Route 128 between Lions Park and Grandstaff Canyon, where the Porcupine Rim Trail and Whole Enchilada trailheads are located.
The project is extending the pathway a further 0.7 miles and represents a partnership between the BLM, the state of Utah and the Utah Department of Transportation.
"It's going to be, right at its finish, 2.5 miles of paved trail right beside the highway. So, people with wheelchairs are going to be able to pull right there, get their chair out, and they have the river on one side and these two massive rock cliffs — the red rock cliffs that are so famous here in Utah — standing on both sides. I say, 'OK, this is where we should be putting people,'" Pearce said. "I can't imagine a more wholesome place to put people for the first time."
Pearce also mentioned that the vision of Jennifer Jones, a BLM assistant field manager in Moab who worked on the Colorado Project, is one he'd like to see BLM offices across the country adopt.
The notion of ensuring local managers have decision-making power is integral to Pearce's management style. He consistently praised Utah BLM leaders for how well they've helped pave the way for other states to make the most of the initiative.
Is there money for new amenities?
Pearce joked that Price must have put Deseret News up to asking whether there was an established budget for the initiative. And, in answering, neither Pearce nor Price mentioned an exact figure. The two did discuss how the BLM is funded, which is through congressional appropriations.
"Those dollars only go so far," Price said. "So we, of course, reach out to our partners and we take — I don't want to say take advantage — but we want to build those relationships with our partners, such as this trail. It's not just BLM. It's BLM, it's the state, it's UDOT, and we work together in tandem to make the most out of what there is available."
Pearce also mentioned the Legacy Restoration Fund, which allocated $1.8 billion to the BLM annually, and the agency can use that money toward the outside initiative. However, that fund stopped receiving deposits when the Great American Outdoor Act — the legislation that necessitated the payments — expired last fall.
From those funds, Pearce said $400 million was put toward deferred maintenance, and another $400 million toward roads and dams. Of the remaining, some is going to an unexpected request from the public: shooting ranges.
"So, we do have that dedicated stream just for this single purpose, and it's up to Congress to reauthorize it," Pearce said. "I'm one of a team of three that sit down every week, and we go through and look at all the contracts ... very, very much understanding that we need to dedicate a piece of our budget to this particular concept."
Still, Price said the BLM is working hard to manage its multiple-use mandate while making its lands more accessible to the public.
She said that the BLM is looking to find all the places where it doesn't have access to public lands and find ways to obtain that access. It's looking for places that lack trails, so trails can be built.
"These are America's public lands. We want people to come out and enjoy their public lands. And whether that's a walk, a hike, whether that's a river rafting trip, whether that's rappelling, there's so many opportunities," Price said. "I'm not just talking about Utah. Utah has such a diverse opportunity, but they're out there everywhere on America's public lands. And so, let's get people outdoors and let's get them enjoying their public lands."
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.