WA DNR releases first statewide recreation plan, seeks public input

(The Center Square) – The Washington State Department of Natural Resources is asking the public for feedback on its first statewide recreation strategic plan.

DNR’s Outdoor Access and Responsible Recreation Strategic Plan has been in the works for more than a year and is expected to be finalized before the end of the year.

The plan is meant to set the agency’s priorities for recreation management and outdoor access on DNR-managed lands. The plan to ensure natural, cultural and tribal resources are respected and promoted throughout the state while offering high-quality, accessible recreation opportunities is a response to a 21% increase in visitation to DNR lands from 2019 to 2020.

“Along with an increase in visitation comes an increase in public abuse of DNR lands,” DNR Statewide Recreation Manager Andrea Martin said during a Monday news conference. “We’ve seen an uptick in unsanctioned trail building, illegal dumping, timber theft and user conflicts on trails and in campgrounds.”

DNR staff are being overworked, Martin noted.

“Staff lack the resources necessary to meet the demands of right now, as well as proactively plan for the future,” Martin said, explaining that new plan is intended to do four things.

“It will provide DNR with a unified vision for how to address emerging trends in recreation across the state, it will help guide DNR as the future of our agency is considered, it will be a guide for agency priorities as we continue to work with tribes and partners over the next decade in recreation planning and management, and it will be a tool to support legislative and budget requests to help DNR get the resources that we need,” she said.

Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz said DNR has worked with tribes throughout the development of the plan, through a series of meetings to garner input before and during the drafting process.

“At the forefront of this plan must be our tribes,” Franz said. “This sets forth a co-management strategy and partnership with our tribes that will actually recognize and respect tribal rights to traditional foods and land. Tribes have a sovereign right to the lands of this state, and we have a responsibility to ensure that their use and access to cultural resources is recognized and respected.” 

Addressing climate impacts on DNR-managed lands is also part of the new strategy.

“We are facing significant threats from climate change as we see increasing drought, the dying of our forests, ocean acidification, sea level rise, and as we see every year, increasing wildfires in every corner of our state,” Franz said.

The 2024 wildfire season burned 308,000 acres across the state, which is more than in 2022 and 2023 but less than in 2020 and 2021.

Franz said the abuse of public lands, from vandalism to illegal dumping, must be addressed.

“I’m a big believer that the more we are connecting people with nature and our natural environment, the more they are going to be committed to understanding and caring for them not just now but into the future,” she said.

According to DNR, one of the most common forms of vandalism on state lands is trash dumping. People abandon bags of garbage, old mattresses, broken toilets, and even hazardous waste.