National Extension Outdoor Recreation Working Group
Since 2023, NERCRD has provided administrative and communications support to an initiative emerging from its collaboration with the National Extension Tourism Network, in response to the 2022 USDA Interagency Memorandum of Understanding on Supporting the Nation’s Outdoor Recreation Economy (MOU). The MOU states that building the U.S. recreation economy is one of the USDA’s top priorities and calls on the RRDCs to implement the MOU. To that end, NERCRD and NET co-hosted an outdoor recreation national networking meeting in November 2022 that resulted in the creation of the National Extension Outdoor Recreation Working Group (NEORWG).
A primary objective of this group is to convene a community of Extension professionals to engage with the goals of the MOU (PDF).
Since then, NERCRD has co-organized and co-hosted monthly NEORWG steering committee meetings and has supported this steering committee as they establish a vision and mission for the NEORWG.
Follow the work of this Working Group via its website.
Funding Agency: NERCRD's staff support of this effort is funded by the NERCRD core grant from USDA NIFA.
Principal Investigator: NEORWG Co-chairs: Doug Arbogast, West Virginia University and Jake Powell, Utah State University
Start Date: November, 2022