In the Speak-Out column in its last issue, Ski Area Management correctly pointed out that a public relations effort, or a recycling program, or an environmental award is not going to be enough to forestall the efforts of no-growth protectionists in blocking the expansion needed to serve future generations of skiers.
Much more will be called for if the ski industry is to become a truly meaningful part of the overall environmental movement in this country. The medicine may be powerful indeed.
In a talk I gave to resort, town and county managers from across the U.S. in June at Park City, I made the following observations about what resort operators may have to undertake:
- Plans for launching or expanding hospitality/recreational facilities in the mountains should be driven by the goal of conserving the environment that inspired the development. It should embrace aesthetic projections of how the development will look and be impacted by ancillary development, and even the posting of bonds to repair environmental degradation should the business fail.
- Ski resorts need not only to encourage a community’s long-range vision of its future, they should also participate in that vision. A ski area’s responsibility for beauty does not stop at its own property line. Everything around the ski area affects people’s impression of the destination they’ve come to, and whether they will come back.
- Ski resorts are unlikely to be perceived more positively by anti-growthers and pristine preservationists until we put our own house in order as employers. That includes making employee housing a condition of launching and expanding a facility.
- The ski resort ceo or owner’s job description should probably allow for at least 35 percent of his or her time to be devoted to the political process—government relations and working with community organizations. Any ski area management job description that omits this responsibility is wrong.
- The ski industry needs to work with environmental groups to establish a better understanding of the economic viability of rural communities. Challenge those opposed to growth to answer this question: If not logging or mining or farming, what business and employment opportunities really exist for people living in scenically attractive areas? Then demonstrate how carefully contained and planned tourism may generate the fewest unfavorable environmental impacts.
- Ski resorts of the future will need to be designed to impose less of an imprint on the land. We need to find ways to foster a future tourism that is not make-or-break dependent on real estate development to succeed. One way is to concentrate overnight accommodations for guests. Future planning needs to focus on hotels, lodges, small inns, b&b’s, all of which can enjoy high occupancy rates.
Environmentalists will perceive skiing more positively if we stop building highly advertised bed-base counts that are essentially a sprawl of investor-owned, second-home condos, empty for much of the year.
- The voice of recreation is unheard in Washington and state capitals. Arguments over the use of public land tend to polarize around the spotted owl and resource exploitation. The ski industry will have to educate elected officials to perceive public land as a resource for the physical and mental well-being of our citizens, and to see resort operators as responsible, environmentally aware people, capable of managing that resource.
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We live in a time when organizations flying the flag of environmentalism believe that closing the mountains to people is the only way to preserve their beauty.
I believe otherwise.
I believe that with aesthetically pleasing design, a relatively small imprint on the land, and attention to water, soil and air, it is possible for visitors to be housed, fed, to recreate and be restored spiritually and physically by the mountains. How can we make others believe it?
By modifying our own behavior.
