The 2026 Outdoor Recreation Council of British Columbia conference, hosted at Thompson Rivers University from May 20-22, marked a significant moment for BC’s outdoor recreation sector. As part of ORCBC’s 50th anniversary year, the gathering brought together volunteers, Indigenous partners, land managers, policymakers, and community leaders, many of whom are grappling with the same question: how do we sustain outdoor recreation systems that are under increasing pressure, while protecting the values that make them meaningful in the first place?
Across three days of sessions, panels, outdoor adventures, and informal conversations, a clear set of tensions emerged. Demand for outdoor recreation is rising rapidly, while funding, volunteer capacity, and institutional support may not be keeping pace. The result is a sector being asked to do more with less, while also adapting to changing user behaviours, new technologies, and evolving expectations about land stewardship and reconciliation.
What stood out most was not a single solution, but a shared recognition that the system itself needs to evolve.
The trilemma facing outdoor recreation
A recurring theme throughout the conference was what many described as a trilemma: increasing participation in outdoor recreation, decreasing funding and grant availability, and widespread volunteer burnout.
Outdoor recreation organizations across BC are experiencing sustained pressure. Trails are busier. Infrastructure is aging. Climate impacts are becoming more visible. All while the volunteer base that has historically maintained these organizations has been stretched thin.
One of the most concerning insights shared at the conference is that burnout is not just widespread, it is structural. Many volunteers and staff deeply love the work, but fewer are showing up to lend a hand, and even fewer still are recommending it as a long-term career. To add to this, when people leave the sector, they often leave it entirely, taking institutional knowledge and community relationships with them.
This raises a fundamental question for the sector: if the current model depends on goodwill and overextension, how sustainable is it?
Reframing value in outdoor recreation
Another key conversation centred on how we define and measure value in outdoor recreation.
Much of the system still relies on measuring cost, whether that is infrastructure investment, maintenance, or program delivery. But participants repeatedly asked a harder question: how do we measure the value of outdoor recreation itself?
That includes physical and mental health benefits, community connection, cultural meaning, environmental stewardship, and the intangible experience of place. These outcomes are real, but difficult to quantify in traditional funding frameworks.
A related challenge emerged: if value cannot be easily quantified, how do we justify investment in it?
This tension is increasingly central to funding conversations, especially as governments and funders demand clearer metrics while community organizations are trying to protect outcomes that do not fit neatly into spreadsheets.
Planning for the future, not just the present
Several sessions challenged attendees to think beyond current use patterns and consider what outdoor recreation will look like in the next decade.
That includes familiar pressures like increased trail use and user conflict, but also emerging considerations such as new mobility technologies on trails, including devices like e-bikes and other wheeled recreation formats that are not yet fully integrated into planning frameworks.
The message was clear: planning for today is no longer enough. The sector needs to anticipate future use cases and build systems that are adaptable, not reactive.
Regenerative tourism and shared responsibility
The conference also featured Leave No Trace Board Member Dr. Clara-Jane Blye’s recent research project titled “Regenerative Tourism in Action: Revelstoke Thanksgiving Back”.
In collaboration with Tourism Revelstoke, the project invited tourists to volunteer with a local non-profit as a way to give back to the community during their stay, rather than simply existing as a tourist.
The initiative demonstrated that visitors can meaningfully contribute to the places they stay when structured opportunities are created, pointing to an important evolution in tourism thinking that goes beyond reducing impact and creates a system where positive contribution becomes part of the experience.
Repairing Our Relationship with Outdoor Gear
One of the more sobering insights from the conference came from a talk titled ReHub: Building Circular Infrastructure for B.C.’s Outdoor Recreation Economy. The talk was hosted by KORE Outdoors Executive Director Kevin Pennock and College of the Rockies President and CEO Michael Crowe. During their presentation, they shared that the B.C. outdoor recreation sector faces a significant sustainability challenge: less than 1% of materials used in outdoor clothing and gear are recycled, while an estimated 85% end up in landfills, where they can persist for centuries due to their complex synthetic compositions.
To help address this challenge, KORE Outdoors and the College of the Rockies announced the launch of Canada’s first outdoor gear repair and advanced manufacturing centre at the College’s Gold Creek Campus in Cranbrook. The Centre builds on momentum generated by KORE’s existing work through its ReHub Gear Repair Tour, which made its first stop at the conference on May 22. The repair tour initiative aims to shift the industry away from single-use thinking by keeping products in circulation longer, repairing and extending the life of technical garments and outdoor equipment that might otherwise end up in landfill. Over the three days of the conference, the team completed more than 100 repairs, diverting a meaningful volume of gear from disposal and giving it a second life in the field.
While this announcement represents an important step forward, it also highlights how much work remains to be done. If outdoor recreation continues to grow as projected, the systems needed to repair, reuse, and recycle gear will need to grow alongside it. Initiatives like ReHub demonstrate what is possible, but creating a truly circular outdoor recreation economy will require continued investment, collaboration, and participation from industry, organizations, and recreationists alike.
For Leave No Trace, this conversation reinforces an important idea: stewardship extends beyond our behaviour in outdoor spaces. While the principles encourage us to minimize our impacts on the land, circular initiatives like ReHub invite us to consider the full lifecycle of the gear we use to access those places. Choosing to repair rather than replace, supporting products designed for longevity, and reducing unnecessary waste are all ways of putting outdoor ethics into practice. As recreation continues to evolve, circularity may become an increasingly important part of what responsible recreation looks like both on and off the trail.
If you want different outcomes, you need a different system
Perhaps the most important takeaway from the conference was not about any single program or initiative, but about systems change.
There was a consistent recognition that incremental improvements may not be sufficient. If the sector wants different outcomes, whether that is healthier ecosystems, more equitable access, or more sustainable organizations, it will require rethinking how funding flows, how labour is supported, how value is defined, and how decisions are made.
This includes hard questions about governance models, long-term funding stability, and how to better support the volunteer and nonprofit workforce that underpins much of BC’s outdoor recreation infrastructure.
Closing reflection
The 2026 ORCBC Conference was both a celebration of 50 years of collaboration and a clear-eyed look at the challenges ahead.
What emerged most strongly was not pessimism, but urgency paired with commitment. The people working in this sector are deeply invested in its future, and there is growing alignment around the need to move from incremental fixes to more intentional system change.
The opportunity now is to ensure that the systems supporting outdoor recreation evolve at the same pace as the landscapes, technologies, and communities they serve. That includes funding models, governance structures, and the shared norms that shape how people behave in outdoor spaces.
Organizations like Leave No Trace Canada have a clear role to play in that next chapter, not only in continuing to advance outdoor ethics, but in helping reframe what responsible recreation looks like in a modern context, where higher use, greater diversity of users, and Indigenous land stewardship realities all intersect.
Outdoor recreation in British Columbia has always been shaped by change. The opportunity coming out of Kamloops is to actively shape what comes next, together.
