Jun 16, 2020
America Outdoors Executive Director Aaron Bannon is a Casper Wyoming native, spent two years in the Peace Corps and ten years in conservation advocacy before settling in Lander Wyoming to work with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS)
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Show Notes
America Outdoors Executive Director Aaron Bannon is a Casper Wyoming native, spent two years in the Peace Corps and ten years in conservation advocacy before settling in Lander Wyoming to work with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS)
My guest today is a Casper, Wyoming native. He spent two years in the Peace Corps and 10 years in conservation advocacy before settling in Lander, Wyoming to work with the National Outdoor Leadership School, America Outdoors executive Aaron Bannon.
Yeah,
I've been in Lander for about 13 years. So a good chunk of life.
Yeah. Yeah. Nice. It's a beautiful spot. A lot of people will hit
it, like on their way to Grand Tetons or Yellowstone or something like that. But for those who hang out, uh,
yeah, there's, it's kind of a climbing Mecca. So you'd find a lot
of climbers who make their home here. There's a, you know, a lot of
unique formations up in sinks Canyon and the wind river age that
are a consistent draw. A lot of history there too.
How'd you get introduced to the outdoors must have been as a kid, right, growing up?
My
dad would take us camping every year up in the Big Horn Mountains, which are just a couple of hours North of Casper.
There was this annual camping trip. We'd always go to the same
spot. I wanted to do a little bit more and I can recall in high
school a couple of total junk show backpacking trips that I tried
to do with my friends. We took cast iron pots, just ridiculous. But
we knew enough to figure it out and certainly enough to still enjoy
it.
You
spent some time with the Peace Corps too. Where, where were you in
the world during that time?
I was
in Russia. It was an interesting time, right? It was from 1996 to
1998. And the Berlin wall had just recently fell. The iron curtain
had just recently dissolved and I think we were only the second
group, maybe the third group of peace Corps volunteers that Russia
was even accepting. That program is over now. They don't feel like
they need to be treated like a developing country basically. But
lucky me, I got to go there when I did. I was teaching English in a
small town of 150 people. Basically I taught all the grade levels
and it was fairly remote.
You spent some time in DC and in San Francisco as a conference conservation consultant, how those experiences impacted your career?
I had
no idea how helpful all that time would be to what I'm doing now. I
was doing media work in DC and got to understand the news cycle,
let's say you know what you need to do if you want to try to impact
or change it. What a press release needs to look like and stuff for
media. And training folks who are going to be in front of the
camera. I was like a junior media officer. I don't mean to inflate
what I was doing, but I learned a lot.
But I
always wanted to work on campaigns. Conservation campaigns and as I
carried into San Francisco, I was even doing it here in Wyoming. I
started to get a sense of what it takes to sort of set the goal,
strive for it and overcome, let's say more well-funded adversaries,
uh, and, uh, and, and find, find those opportunities. And it's
always about sort of grassroots organizing, working with partners.
There's a lot of egos that people bring to it which is always
challenging. It's all about trying to get the right voice, with the
right concern, to the point of decision, whoever that is, right.
Whoever you decide your target is, be it a governor or senator, or
a company. In the case of that San Francisco role with we're doing
a lot of market space campaigns and trying to influence people's
shares. And that would be enough to a lot of times to change their
corporate behavior.
What are you guys working on these days with America Outdoors?
Work
has been all about just trying to protect the operational
capabilities of our membership, which is all our guides and
outfitters. We're not a huge association. There's three of us right
now at America Outdoors.
Let's say three paid staff that the membership engages with
regularly and is incredibly helpful in everything. So we've been at
a level of just trying to interpret what's coming down and how we
can help folks sustain their businesses. There are tons of guides
and outfitters who've been shut down are not going to operate at
all this summer. Then there are other people who will work and try
to pull it off. I would say probably 80 to 90% of our membership is
going to try to pull it off in one fashion or another. A number of
them are gonna try to do it and probably do it at a loss because
they recognize the importance of connecting people with the
outdoors.
How are you guys navigating the Covid environment specifically? Let's talk about America Outdoors first.
It's
been a direct hit for sure. We're a lobbying organization in the
eyes of the federal government. So some of the relief packages that
have come through we have not been eligible for. The Payroll
Protection Program doesn't work for lobbying organizations. And
like I said, we're three people now, we were for a month and a half
ago. I took a pay cut. We had to reduce a staff member from full
time to quarter time. We had to lay off someone else with the hopes
that we could bring them back if we have a high and successful
membership renewal. Right now we're in the middle of the membership
renewal. So yeah, it's been as hard on us
At
the same time, we've still tried to perform. We've been pushing a
ton of content out to our guides and outfitters really and to the
entire industry. We've tried to break down those lines and make
everything we have available to people. Whether it's working with
them through the Payroll Protection Program, or whether it's,
helping them understand their insurance, liability waivers, or
trying to get leaders in the various public lands management
agencies to connect with our membership and think about what the
closures looked like or what reopening looks like.
I
think there are a couple of folks who are going to have a really
good year if they've got like a livery, right. If they're renting
gear you can use to go kayak somewhere, you know? The river didn't
shut down, those guys are gonna do okay. Maybe do really well. On
the other hand, I mean, you look at grand Canyon. I think they just
opened up last weekend, but not to boaters. So those guides and
outfitters who were running commercial trips down Grand Canyon are
waiting until I think Friday is when they get to start going. So
they've already lost like six weeks out of their eighteen to twenty
week season, something like that.
Have you heard from guides and outfitters about how they're changing their day to day operations?
Yeah,
I would say they're rising to the occasion. I think for operators
who have dispersed operations doing a lot of different kinds of
trips across the country and have a lot of different bases, they've
sort of not been able to pull that off because you know, every
agency, every site, every forest has a different protocol, every
County. And sometimes the forest is saying you have to comply with
all the counties that overlap.
So I
think the guides and outfitters that we're doing at best are
setting expectations for people too. So when people show up, they
know what they're getting, they're sort of constraining their
operation in a way that they can manage it. You know, shuttles are
real pickle trying to turn people around in a 15 passenger van and
still respect social distancing or whatever. So they're either
fogging their buses after every trip or let's say like having
people wear face masks. Maybe setting up partitions between the
seats. Going to all these lengths and just trying to actively clean
and maybe push some of their operation outside. Maybe the
registration desk is moved from the retail shop to the front porch
or something. And also like posting all these protocols, that's a
key part of it.
There are some significant changes in the world ahead of us. What have you seen or heard in the last few weeks that are inspiring to you?
You
know Rick, it feels like we're just moving from one big societal
wake-up call to the next doesn't it? Cause we certainly not through
the coronavirus. Like we are in the middle of it. I expect a second
wave. I don't know when that's going to come, but with all those
folks close together and all those protests sites.
George Floyd's death and everything that's come from
that, the global movement for equality has been remarkable to
watch. And for me in this position has been a wake-up call that we
have been probably slow to evolve as an industry, you know? It's a
predominantly white industry, at least the parts that I see.
Certainly, you don't have to go that far South to see that there's
plenty of people who love the outdoors who are black or Brown. And
I think it's kind of presumptuous to categorize like towards this
white space, but when you go to an America Outdoors conference
that's what it looks like. So I think we have our work cut out for
us to be relevant from now on
You mentioned you were out outside with your kids recently. What other activities do you participate in these days?
I have
a six-year-old and a 10-year-old. So you know, we visit the state
parks, Wyoming State Parks has put up a number of yurts all across
their system. There's a really nice Canyon just outside of Lander
called Sinks Canyon. We were going up there and spent a few days. It's
literally a 20-minute drive, which is nice. And you're really in
it, we found a walk-in yurt that's really close to the river. It's
the Little Porosia River that runs through there. And we went on
hikes, went looking for wildflowers. And do you know about that
Forrest Fen poem, you know what I'm talking about? Forrest Fen is a guy out of Santa Fe who wrote a poem, he had cancer
I think. I thought it was like 98. It could have been, it could
have been the early oughts. He's like a rare goods collector and he
hit a treasure in the Rockies somewhere. So we were looking for it.
I wanted to sort of get the kids excited, so nothing like a
treasure hunt. And he had landed here. He flew into Lander like
back in 2003 and people would conjecture that he may have even
possibly buried his treasure up Sinks, Canyon. So I was said, let's
go find it. I’m curious where they found it, they haven't said
where they found it. It was like off the Yellowstone River, just
outside of the park in Northern Montana. But we'll
see.
Do you have any suggestions or advice for folks that might want to get into the outdoor adventure biz?
Yeah.
let's think about folks who have been in an urban environment for a
long time and are trying to find a connection. Because I think the
paths are a little bit more clear for folks who've had had that. So
you know, if you want to be a guide and outfitter, you sorta gotta
be a grunt for a while. You gotta get into the ground level. You
gotta paddle the supply boat for awhile. But you don't need stuff,
you know? Stuff is fun and it's easy to collect and I have more
stuff than I need, but I think what you really need is that, you
know, a desire for adventure. Look at a map, find that outdoor
space that's nearby and go explore it. I remember a time I was
living in DC and I got a pair of pants for Christmas that were
lined, I think they were these thin polyester pants that had sort
of this mesh lining. I was like, Oh, look, these are winter camping
pants. I drove into the Shenandoah and went camping because I had
these pants. Well, the pants didn't do anything. They were not the
equipment that I needed. But it was still just like being
inadequately supplied and surviving. Your first time is always a
disaster.
Do you have a favorite piece of outdoor gear under a hundred dollars?
Yea,
this is a little bit of metaphorical, I guess, but it's going to be
like a Brunton compass. It's a company that manufactured these things for
years, just out of Riverton, Wyoming, 30 minutes North of here. Get
a quality compass, figure out how to use it, get a map, like USGS
map at $8 a pop or a few of them. So you got a few quads, then you
can figure out where you're going. That's my favorite piece of
equipment.
If
you could have a huge banner to hang at the entrance to the outdoor
retailer show, what would it say?
I've
been to the Outdoor Retailer show. The America Outdoors doesn't
usually have booth there, which is funny, but yeah, good question.
Um, gosh, it's like, “we
are still here” is almost
what I think the banner should say. And I really hope that's the
case. I'll tell you what, we've done a number of surveys of the
guides and outfitters, just to see how things were going. And when
this first sort of kicked off people were saying that if things
were shut down for three months or more that they would be out of
work, 35% of guides and outfitters were saying that. 60% of guides
and outfitters were saying that if they were shut down for six
months or more that their businesses wouldn't survive. So, this has
all been about survival, right?
So as we wrap up, is there anything else you want to say or ask our listeners?
I
just want to appreciate everybody who tunes into your show and
tries to find ways to get outdoors and find good gear. It's a great
thing that you're doing. I think we both understand that gear is a
means to an end. It's great to have good stuff. But it's not
necessary to have a great experience. So whatever it takes to
facilitate people's ability to find some time in nature. Chill out,
get your head together, get your boat in the water, whatever it
takes it's invaluable.
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people want to follow up with you, what's the best
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