A Framework for Outdoor Recreation in Western Australia 2019
Outdoor recreation, nature-based tourism and adventure recreation
make a huge contribution to the health, wealth, wellbeing and happiness
of individuals and communities in Western Australia. They also
contribute greatly to the State’s economy.
Every day, Western Australians enjoy our State’s unique outdoor
lifestyle – whether walking, riding, exploring, exercising, paddling or
engaging in a range of outdoor and adventure activities.
The purpose of this framework is to guide local and regional outdoor
recreation planning by government, corporate and community stakeholders.
It is also intended to encourage cross agency and organisational
collaboration to maximise the benefits of outdoor recreation for
participants and service providers.
This framework is the product of an extensive consultation process
and review by a range of government, commercial and recreation sector
stakeholders.
The Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries
wishes to thank the following organisations for their ongoing support
and involvement in promotion of outdoor recreation:
- Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions
- Great Southern Centre for Outdoor Recreation Excellence (GS-CORE)
- Outdoors WA
- Bibbulmun Track Foundation
- WA Sports Federation
- Perth Trail Series
- Parks and Leisure Australia (WA Region)
- WestCycle
- Px2 Consultancy
- Recreational Trailbike Riders Association
- Nature Play WA
- Trails WA
Introduction
Purpose of this framework
Outdoor recreation, nature-based tourism and adventure recreation make a huge contribution to the health, wealth, wellbeing and happiness of individuals and communities in Western Australia. They also contribute greatly to the State’s economy.
Every day, Western Australians enjoy our State’s unique outdoor
lifestyle — whether walking, riding, exploring, exercising, paddling or
engaging in a range of outdoor and adventure activities.
The Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries
identifies promotion of adventure and outdoor recreation as a challenge
which must be addressed to achieve the key outcomes of increased
participation, improved performance, greater well-being and enhanced
social capital and organisational capability.
The purpose of this framework is to guide local and regional outdoor
recreation planning by government, corporate and community stakeholders.
It is also intended to encourage cross agency and organisational
collaboration to maximise the benefits of outdoor recreation for
participants and service providers.
Outdoor recreation activities
Land-based
- bushwalking
- trail running
- mountain biking
- orienteering and navigation
- rock climbing and abseiling
- trail bike riding
- horse riding
- four-wheel driving
- camping
Water-based
- swimming
- surfing
- kayaking and white water rafting
- canoeing
- paddle boarding
- sailing
- kiteboarding
- ind surfing
Where does outdoor recreation take place?
- urban parklands
- regional and national parks
- rivers, lakes and oceans
- wilderness areas
Being Active Outdoors
Five pillars supporting the benefits of outdoor recreation
- Personal development, challenge and enjoyment
- Building resilience
- Fostering spirit and identity
- Changing lives of young people at risk
- Encouraging challenge and risk taking
- Improved health and wellbeing
- Physical and mental health benefits
- Social cohesion and inclusion
- Avoided healthcare costs
- Outdoor learning
- Outdoor literacy
- Outdoor education
- Connection to nature
- Getting back to nature
- Volunteering
- Environmental stewardship
- Economic development
- Investment in tourism and recreational facilities
- Pathways to employment
Pillar One: Personal development, challenge and enjoyment
Outdoor adventure enables people to develop resilience, leadership,
problem solving skills and self-reliance, contributing to the ability to
deal with the everyday stress of modern life.1 The evidence shows that active and self-reliant people are less susceptible to depression, anxiety and anti-social behaviour.
Building resilience
Good mental health thrives when people have the capacity to adapt or
even flourish in the face of challenges. Increased resilience can reduce
the incidence of depression and mental health disorders.2 Outdoor
recreation and adventure provide the challenge, requirement for
decision-making, opportunity for teamwork (trust) and controlled risk
that can support resilience building blocks.3
Fostering spirit and identity
Engaging in activity in a natural setting enables participants to
focus on the present, providing a safe place for personal growth and
renewed self-confidence.4 Access to the Australian outdoors
is an important component of our national and cultural identity.
‘Connection to country’, a concept with enormous importance for
Aboriginal people, can be appreciated by all Australians.
Changing lives of young people at risk
Outdoor recreation — particularly in the form of adventure activities
or wilderness therapy — has been shown to have both preventive and
remedial benefits for people at risk.5 For example, outdoor therapy has been linked to reduced delinquency among adolescents.6
Encouraging challenge and risk taking
Lack of exposure to challenging situations can deprive children and
young people of the opportunity to develop risk awareness and risk
management skills.7 Early experiences of outdoor adventure
and ‘safe danger’ can progressively develop risk awareness in
environments where the challenge is real, but the potential consequences
are managed.8 Participation in ‘safe danger’9 and
‘controlled risk’ activities can facilitate development of life skills
such as risk assessment and management, resilience and teamwork.
Pillar Two: Improved health and wellbeing
Physical inactivity is a recognised leading cause of ill health and a
large associated health, social and economic burden. Many chronic
diseases, both physical and mental, share common preventable risk
factors.10
Keeping a lid on healthcare costs
Avoided healthcare costs are costs caused by a health problem or
illness which are avoided by a healthcare intervention. In Victoria,
avoided healthcare costs associated with participation in outdoor
recreation were calculated as $265 million.11
Apart from physical health benefits, research has demonstrated that
contact with nature has restorative properties, fostering an
individual’s feelings of vitality, alertness, focus, and resurgence in
energy.12
Research exploring relationships between the duration, frequency and
intensity of exposure to urban nature found that people who made long
visits to green spaces had lower rates of depression and high blood
pressure, and those who visited more frequently had greater social
cohesion.13
In addition, many outdoor activities are social in nature and can
alleviate social isolation and promote integration with others and
community.14
Why the ‘green gym’ is better than exercising indoors
There is a growing body of evidence that shows that ‘nature’s green
gym’ provides benefits that outweigh those provided by exercising
indoors. For example, athletes running on nature trails have reported
less fatigue after a 20-minute run than they did following a similar
length run on an indoor track.15
Outdoor exercise has been shown to lower systolic blood pressure more
than treadmill training16, and simply walking or running outdoors could
lead to a lower risk of depression.17,18
Mental calming gained from time spent in nature, such as an outdoors
walk for as little as 20 minutes, has been found to mitigate the effects
of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.19 In addition, children’s attentional functioning benefits from time spent outdoors.20
Pillar Three: Outdoor learning
The outdoors has been proven to assist with learning. Students who
experience nature as part of the educational process have proven to be
more engaged and enthusiastic in all areas of study. They score higher
on tests in reading, writing, and maths and have demonstrated better
listening skills.
21
Getting an early start
A multitude of studies have shown that playing and learning in
natural environments is essential to children’s development of core
skills, including observation, problem-solving and reasoning,
categorisation, creativity, imagination, and risk-identification, along
with emotional and intellectual development.22
Interest is increasing in promotion of outdoor learning to address
detrimental effects to children’s long-term health and wellbeing through
risk-averse approaches to play, lack of time for unstructured outdoor
play, and time spent in screen-focused sedentary activity.23
Outdoor play in nature offers several benefits, including
opportunities to learn physical skills and build stamina, develop social
skills, manage risks and foster respect for nature.24
Outdoor education
Outdoor education can deliver direct knowledge and skills to students
and can help foster positive character traits such as resilience,
confidence, and leadership skills.25
Outdoor education programs can improve self-concept and teamwork
among primary and secondary school students and these positive impacts
often appear to persist over time.26
Outdoor learning is considered an integral component of the
Australian national education curriculum from Foundation through to Year
6, with outdoor education activities offered in Years 7-10.27
In Western Australia, students in Years 11 and 12 can participate in
outdoor education courses to prepare for career and employment pathways
in areas such as outdoor leadership, environmental interpretation,
environmental planning, facilities management, eco-tourism, and outdoor
education.28
Pillar Four: Connection to nature
In 2005, the author and journalist Richard Louv coined the phrase
‘nature-deficit disorder’29 to describe the human costs of alienation
from nature. Identified disbenefits included diminished use of the
senses, attention difficulties, higher rates of physical and emotional
illnesses, a rising rate of myopia, child and adult obesity, Vitamin D
deficiency, and other maladies.30
It has been demonstrated that positive experiences in nature is one
avenue for fostering pro-environmental behaviour and identification as
an environmentalist or conservationist.31 If children are
given the opportunity to experience nature through outdoor recreation
and play, even in simple ways, environmental stewardship, interaction
and engagement may follow quite instinctively.32
Environmental stewardship
The more people who recreate outdoors in the natural environment, the
stronger the base for environmental advocacy and the need for
responsible conservation of natural environments.33
Just as gateway activities can move people from a sedentary to an
active lifestyle in manageable steps, outdoor recreation can move people
from a focus purely on the activity itself to a more balanced view
enabling them to enjoy their chosen activities while enjoying,
respecting and protecting the environment which supports that activity.34
Volunteering
Outdoor recreation relies heavily on volunteers who share their
passion with others, act as stewards of natural environments and as
ambassadors for their activity. Volunteering has benefits for
individuals by providing training, personal development and networking,
contributing to improved self-esteem, competence and knowledge.35
Mid-life environmental volunteering has also been shown to be
significantly and positively associated with physical activity, health
and wellbeing outcomes and reduced depressive symptoms.36 A common motivation for becoming engaged in environmental volunteering is an enjoyment of the outdoors.37
Pillar Five: Economic development
Viewing nature-based outdoor recreation as just a leisure or lifestyle choice or a health issue can
obscure its economic importance. Adventure tourism is one of the fastest growing categories of
tourism that attracts high value customers, supports local economies, and encourages sustainable
practices.38
In 2015-2016, an estimated 2.7 million overnight visitors participated in nature-based activity in
Western Australia, an increase of 15% per annum since 2012.39
In 2016, a report on the nature-based outdoor economy was commissioned by Outdoors Victoria and
Sport and Recreation Victoria. It was found that per capita expenditure was approximately $1254
per person per year for a total expenditure of $7.4 billion.40
Estimated economic value of nature-based outdoor recreation in Victoria
- $7.4b spent on nature-based outdoor activities each year (equipment, trips, travel, activities,
services) - $225m from schools on nature-based outdoor recreation
71,000 direct and indirect full-time equivalent jobs
2200 school FTEs - Avoided healthcare system costs $265m (considered underestimated)
- Activity value (consumer surplus) $455m
- Outdoor recreation contributes $720m to improved productivity
Outdoor recreation participation, settings and experiences
The places and settings where outdoor recreation occurs also will
vary greatly depending on the type of experience sought, the level of
skill held by individuals and the effort required to access different
environments. In addition, some activities require access to specialist
equipment, i.e. access to a mountain bike to explore forest trails, or a
kayak or paddleboard to explore waterways and lakes.
First experiences of outdoor recreation often occur in places close
to home. Local tracks and trails through parklands and bushland, along
rivers and beaches provide entry points for outdoor recreation. Managed
campsites with appropriate facilities for outdoor recreation provide
introductory pathways for skill development and ongoing participation.
Places and experiences that are easy to access and require little
equipment or limited skill will attract higher levels of participation.
Easy progressions such as access to urban trails or promoting a longer
walk to a more rewarding picnic spot or associated activities (such as
geo-caching) can create opportunities for increased physical activity
and a deeper engagement with the natural environment. Activities in
remote locations require higher levels of individual skill to ensure
safety and provide an intensity of experience not always found in more
managed environments.
One challenge to providing a range of activity locations, and to
meeting the diverse needs of outdoor recreation participants, is that
infrastructure such as trails are often free public facilities. This can
make investment in outdoor recreation infrastructure projects
inherently more difficult to justify.
Why investment in trails is so important to outdoor recreation
Many outdoor activities involve some form of journey — whether it’s
walking, paddling, cycling or climbing - to navigate from one place to
another. Tracks and trails provide access, direction, pathways for
exploration and open opportunities for a variety of outdoor recreation
experiences on land and water.
Well-planned and well-designed recreational trails can reduce
environmental impact, attract visitors and encourage more people to be
more active, more often.41
Participation spectrum
This participation spectrum gives examples of how people take part in
diverse types of outdoor recreation experiences in different outdoor
settings.
Participation spectrum
Participation spectrum | Setting | Experience sought | Level of skill required | Level of participation |
---|
Outdoor aware - Virtual or visual: On-screen viewing and/or
spectating - Incidental: Spending time in green
spaces near home - Outdoor play: Play and exploration
of outdoor places
| Urban parks and outdoor spaces: easily accessible and highly developed | - Security
- Comfort
- Social
interaction
| 1 | 3 |
Outdoor active - Managed outdoor recreation: Participation in low-risk outdoor activities in managed environments
- Adventure recreation: Participation in more challenging activities and extended visits to natural environments
- Outdoor immersion: Multi-day activity and/or overnight camping in natural environments
| National and regional parks and reserves, and campsites: moderately accessible with limited development | - Managed
risk - Some
comfort - Some
interaction with others
| 1.5 | 2.5 |
Outdoor adventure - Wilderness experience: Self-sufficient, multi-day experience in remote locations
- Extreme adventure: Life-affirming, life-changing
challenge in extreme conditions
| Wilderness locations: remote access with little or no development | - Solitude
- Risk taking
- Self-reliance
| 3 | 1 |
Current issues in outdoor recreation
Pathways to participation
An increasingly urbanised population unfamiliar with the Australian
outdoors, lack of experience, and not knowing how to get started are
often cited as reasons why people do not participate in outdoor
recreation.
There is a need to cater for the diversity of people within
Australian society, particularly culturally diverse and marginalised
populations who may not be familiar with outdoor activities or
landscapes.
There is also a need to provide more entry points and pathways to
participation in outdoor recreation to encourage progression from
beginner to adventurer. Ethnic background, socio-economic circumstance,
physical limitations and gender are often indicators of lower
participation. Promoting family and friends group activities can build
lasting friendships, trust and social capital through shared
participation.
The surging popularity of adventure races and outdoor fitness events,
targeting beginner and experienced participants, is testimony to the
demand for outdoor challenge activities.
Access to outdoor places
Multiple agencies are involved in authorising access to natural areas
and need to manage competing demands and conflicting land uses.
While outdoor recreation infrastructure projects tend to require less
capital expenditure to create or build, they require substantial
ongoing operational funding for maintenance.
The unstructured nature of much outdoor recreation means that there
are no clear lines of communication to convey messages of environmental
stewardship. Some participants appear to value the activity but not the
environment in which it occurs. Informal groups can create an
environmental risk if unaware of access protocols or agreed practices
that apply to commercial operators and events.
Results from a recent community perceptions survey regarding sport and recreation in Western Australia42 found that:
- 8 in 10 people feel it is important to have local places to be
active in nature and only 2 in 3 are satisfied that these spaces are
available
- 8 in 10 people feel that it is important to have places for
adventure sports and outdoor recreation to grow and develop and only
around 2 in 3 are satisfied that these spaces are currently available.
Managing risk
Challenge and risk-taking mean different things to different people. A
task for the outdoors sector is to identify market segments and provide
appropriate entry points and progressive stages of challenge that
appeal to people of all ages and abilities.
Increased demand for more outdoor recreation will likely lead to an
increase in the number of activity providers. There is inherent risk in
most forms of outdoor recreation that must be managed, and a duty of
care is owed to participants by activity leaders.
Inconsistent approaches to risk management may negatively impact on the credibility of the outdoors sector and impact demand.
Pathways to employment
As with most growing industries, there is an inevitable lag between
the recognition of demand for qualified practitioners and the attraction
and training of people with the requisite qualifications. The quality
and capacity of the outdoors sector is reliant on the availability of
well-trained and experienced outdoor leaders. However, in the current
vocational structure, leading outdoor recreation is often seen as an
interim job. Acquisition, training and retention of qualified staff and
volunteers is problematic.
Employment in outdoor recreation is often seasonal, usually offering
low rates of remuneration and not explicitly rewarding higher
qualifications. Staff turnover cycles impact on risk management, as good
judgement and risk assessment comes mainly from experience.
Vocational training and standards assessment options are limited in
Western Australia. Entry into the workforce requires technical skill
qualifications, gained through extensive training and regular
re-qualification. Technical skills can be expensive to attain and
maintain and a casual instructor may require multiple qualifications
such as leadership, roping, first aid, surf rescue and paddling. While
career pathways do exist within the industry through avenues such as
outdoor education, activity instruction, training and management, the
opportunities for progression to higher salaried, long-term positions
can be limited.
Key areas for action
The outdoor recreation sector is as multi-faceted as the outdoors
itself, consisting of outdoor clubs and recreation organisations,
not-for-profit and charitable organisations, private activity operators
and service providers, private and public schools, and recreation units
within State and local government agencies. In addition, land used for
outdoor recreation is often managed by State and local government
agencies.
Key areas identified for action include:
- Understanding of outdoor recreation opportunities, patterns of participation, and projected user demand
- Sustainable access to natural areas to meet increasing demand
- Pathways to participation, employment and training and
- Evaluation of economic and social impacts.
These key areas for action can be addressed at a strategic level, and within regional and local
planning.
Fundamental objectives
To guide action planning, it is suggested that project partners consider four fundamental objectives – valuing, encouraging, enabling and developing outdoor recreation.
Valuing = realising benefits
Ensuring strategies are in place to maximise the economic, social, health, and education benefits of outdoor recreation.
Encouraging = promoting participation
Motivating all stakeholders to act to increase participation, to
encourage diversity and ensure access to outdoor recreation for people
of all ages, backgrounds and ability.
Enabling = meeting demand
Investing in outdoor recreation programs, facilities and infrastructure and providing access to places and
spaces, to meet the demands of diverse user groups.
Developing = creating opportunities
Enhancing the skills, capacity and capability of the outdoor sector
to provide safe, enjoyable outdoor recreation experiences and keep pace
with growing demand.
Collaboration and cooperation
Maximising the benefits of outdoor recreation will take a team effort involving public, private and
not-for-profit organisations from various disciplines (health, education, recreation, environment,
tourism and industry) and all levels of decision-making (federal, State, regional and local).
Valuing
- Develop promotional and advocacy programs to promote the
benefits of participation in outdoor recreation for people of all ages
and abilities
- Promote environmental protection messages that align the interests of participants with the interests of the natural environment
- Identify opportunities for local businesses, clubs and community organisations to support participation in outdoor recreation
Encouraging
- Support the development and promotion of programs for outdoor literacy and skills progression from an early age
- Create entry level options and gateways to participation
including programs to connect marginalised or disadvantaged people to
the outdoors
- Develop resources to encourage schools and education institutions to adopt outdoor learning initiatives and practices
Enabling
- Advocate for investment in outdoor recreation infrastructure and
maintenance by government, community organisations and the private
sector
- Advance the use of technology to market products and services
- Promote sustainable use of natural areas and address growth in demand
- Support programs that encourage environmental stewardship and
volunteering
Developing
- Identify and map local and/or regional providers, government
agencies and other organisations involved in outdoor recreation delivery
and management
- Support development of employment pathways and training programs to progress levels of outdoor leader skill and experience
- Encourage standardisation of safety and risk management principles within organisations, or across local and regional areas
- Engage with tourism agencies to explore opportunities to boost
adventure and outdoor recreation visitation in local and regional areas
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