For the next couple of short weeks, we will celebrate National Great Outdoors Month!
According to the U.S. National Park Service, on June 5th of 2019, the US Senate officially designated June 2019 as ‘Great Outdoors Month.’
‘Great Outdoors Week’ began under President Clinton in 1998 and has grown under the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations into a month-long celebration of the outdoors. Since 2008, governors from across the country have joined in designating June as a month to celebrate the great outdoors and more than half the states have already proclaimed June 2019 as Great Outdoors Month! This celebration brings not only health benefits but social and economic benefits as well.
Wisconsin is among the states that have proclaimed June as Great Outdoors Month. Our proclamation includes some interesting facts about Wisconsin:
- Wisconsin’s forests, trails, recreation areas, national parks, over 100 state parks, and more attracted 113 million visitors in 2019.
- Wisconsin’s outdoor recreation industry directly supports 168,000 jobs, and its economic impact is estimated at almost $18 billion annually.
- In July 2019, Wisconsin established the Office of Outdoor Recreation, becoming one of the first states in the Midwest to create an office dedicated exclusively to promoting outdoor pursuits.
The next messages about National Great Outdoors Month will be written by Mr. Cassini’s class and Escape Club with him as the content curator. They have some great ideas… so it will be fun to see what they come up with!
