Outdoor recreation and forest management: A plea for empirical data

For many people, outdoor recreation provides one of the main opportunities to experience, interact with, and learn about forested landscapes. Yet public recreation use of forests in Canada is not yet well understood; knowing more about this important forest stakeholder group would help to address aspects of social sustainability in forest management. Four considerations for explicitly addressing outdoor recreation interests in forest land-use planning and for the collection of recreation data are presented: (1) normative; (2) pragmatic; (3) economic; and (4) governance. Approaches for the collection of recreation-use characteristics are also discussed. Key words: outdoor recreation, data collection, sustainable forest management, social values