Discussion: Canceled!

I am sorry to have to announce that we must cancel the Harriman Relay and Club Festival due to unexpected difficulties in permitting.

I have enjoyed working with Erin Schirm, Ed Despard and Jeff Teutsch on this exciting project, and I am sure that their great ideas will reappear in other ways. Their idea for a large North American relay along the lines of Jukola and others in Europe is a winner. I was especially drawn to their vision of a fantastic arena experience, where orienteers of all ages have fun all day with new and old friends, cheering on competitors but also playing games, eating great food, and hanging out together.

The difficulty in getting permission from parks, even when past experience suggests that it will be straightforward, seems to be one shared by many clubs around the USA. Maybe it is time for OUSA to think about a larger strategic effort to support clubs in their relationships with land managers, through education, new "win-win" partnership opportunities, and so on.

Erin will be in New York in late October and early November. Currently he is planning to put on a training camp the last weekend in October and some training in the Harriman area that first weekend in November. Juniors especially should be in touch with him about these opportunities; others will be welcome too.

We had intended the Harriman meet as a junior team fundraiser. This year we brought a full team to JWOC and trained for two weeks instead of the usual one. We also brought some members of the Standing and Development teams to expose our juniors to the high level of orienteering in Europe and to build relationships amongst the kids. The families had to pay for airfare, and we had been hoping to cover the rest of the cost of the JWOC trip. We are about $10,000 short of that goal and had hoped to make up some of that with the Harriman meet. On the positive side, we were able to spend a lot more on the Europe trip than in previous years (thanks to great fundraising earlier in the year, and spending down the carryover from 2012). If you see juniors running concessions or other fundraisers this fall, I hope you will support them!

Thanks,

Barb

I'd like to add that HVO has been really awesome in helping us try and pull together this meet. In particular, Daniel Schaublin went to heroic efforts to try and get the permit in place. We really appreciate it.

The mind spins trying to think of reasons park officials would use to withhold a permit for an event at that time of year. Do you have any insights?
It is hard to imagine a more benign time of year for orienteering in a park. The birds aren't nesting, most have headed south. The mammals aren't birthing or caring for their newborn. The trees and other plants aren't budding. For the most part there is a fresh new protective carpet of leaves covering the forest ground.
What other issues could they have?
Yes, perhaps we need a Can-Am thinkfest to deal with the stay out or stay-on-path attitude of a large number of public land custodians.

What other issues could they have?

The underlying issue is lack of awareness of what we do, so when a new manager comes in, institutional memories aren't strong enough and new managers tend to err on the side of caution; and the lack of invested-ness.

Other sports manage land relations with wisdom. Trail runs mandate trailwork. A park manager isn't going to deny a permit even when other overprotective users or in-house naturalists come with overblown concerns, because the manager knows that if they cut off trail runners, these trails will go unmaintained. This culture is much stronger among mountain bikers, who often don't even need organized clubs to take the lead; some just have informal groups that meet once a month or so. There is a profound understanding that you can't play unless you invest in nurturing these relationships.

I know of no orienteering clubs that would regularly shepherd members into workdays in the park. Orienteering USA would certainly benefit from the shared experience of those that have such programs in place.

Orienteers tend to view land managers with slight and a sense of entitlement. Many scoff at permit fees, suggesting that clubs use cheaper areas when permit fees go up. While we have to invest countless hours in planning and permitting relations, others have ridiculed our efforts (which sometimes fail even with the utmost care we invest) as crazy. Permitting paperwork isn't fun, and is the closest to "real not-fun work" an event organizer faces. Yet I know of no clubs that would outsource the task; most require an event director to also do the permitting. Thus little institutional memory is formed also on the club side, and relations that a certain ED may cultivate are forgotten next year when there is a new ED.

These problems stem from the overarching sense of entitlement that orienteering culture, at least in North America, has towards its activity. "You tell me I can't go wherever I want? how dare you!" A thoughtful attitude that takes the fears, concerns, and responsibilities of the "other side" into account would go a long way, as would a shift towards viewing permitting and landowner relationships as perhaps the second or third most important investment of time, after mapping and perhaps publicity, that an orienteering organization can make.

Getting a permit has become somewhat of an uphill battle. We basically have two or three access points in Harriman that work fairly well.

One location (Sebago Lake) was completely shut down after hurricane Sandy damaged some buildings there. Even the parking lot is off limits. Other locations are only accessible when park rangers are on duty during the summer and fall time, e.g. November is out on Lake Welch.

For the junior event, we offered the to pay for a ranger to open the gate and be present (and paid) all day. It appears this didn't convince to allow the event.

Many parks start adding new fees, even filing fees for permits, independently if they are approved or not.

Some of the closing have to do with budget cuts, but then on the other hand our events bring in money for the park. Or would bring money if we are allowed to hold the events.

For the junior event I have visited the park office, sent various descriptions of the event, about the junior team, course maps and other paper work. I negotiated with several different offices, depending on the location.

We were close to getting one of the group camps, but then a technical issue (a potential wash out on the access road) stopped the process there.

The problem is, we don't have much leverage. We also need to keep the relationship with the park rangers and officials in good standing, because they stay there for years and we cannot afford to upset them.

I must emphasize that we have good and friendly connections to several park employees, including the rangers in the field offices. I make sure to take my time, to listen them out and treat them with respect and warmth.

We have to learn to use the few locations that are available and be creative with course setting so that we don't have the same course lay-out over and over again.

Although we/QOC have no lack of access/permit issues, as a club we take several steps along exactly the lines you mention, including:

1. We have a white paper ('Introduction to Orienteering for Land Managers') which we use to introduce ourselves and the sport to land managers, especially if they are new to their current job or we are (newly) working on gaining access to a venue;
2. We have promoted volunteering in local parks to help them with problems they face like invasive plant management;
3. Our VPs - not our event directors - are responsible for establishing and maintaining relationships with the permit providers. Even though we could, we wouldn't outsource this task since we want a personal relationship whenever possible between a core orienteer/volunteer and a park.
4. When possible, we work towards multi-year memorandums of agreement/understanding with a given park, that outline the parameters of the relationship, and perhaps just as importantly, establish a paper trail that can outlive the tenure of any given land manager.

I'm impressed with the QOC approach! It sounds like a handy to-do list for other clubs.

Here at CascadeOC, we're pretty similar in approach to QOC, though maybe not quite as organized. I'm most impressed with QOC's 4th item.

At our recent club strategic planning meeting, we identified land access as our #1 priority, ahead of things like mapping, volunteerism, marketing, etc. We've already lost off-trail access to a few maps, but around here, that's not a deal-breaker, as several of those maps have dense trail networks and even denser vegetation in between.

Regarding the 4 things mentioned above:

1. I know that our club president has some documentation for land managers, but I don't happen to recall what it's called and how often we distribute is.

2. We've had work parties with various parks with "friends of" groups, which are also important groups to work with, since they heavily influence park land managers. We're also developing a relationship with the Washington Trails Association (which has significant influence), which involves work parties.

3. Similar to QOC, we have a dedicated volunteer role called Land Permission Coordinator and she, along with our club president, manage those relationships. We have Series Coordinators that plan our club's three seasons, and Event Directors are pretty much just focus on day-of-event tasks.

4. This is something that sounds really, really, really smart, and I don't think we have this in place here, and something I'll suggest at our next board meeting.

Are the QOC White Paper online somewhere? Or available in some other way. I think I could use it next week!

Anybody?

(I tried Google, but couldn't find The Introduction to Orienteering for Land Manager)

I don't actually have a copy, Adrian, so I just tried shaking the tree to see if one will, in due course, fall out.

Adrian - check your inbox.

Thanks guys - this is a great document!

I updated Greg's document for my own purposes. It is online on the Barebones website, on the Resources Page or directly here

Thanks for posting that. We don't have issues now but----the trend is not good so it's nice to be prepared.