WORLAND – The Bighorn Basin Outdoor Recreation Collaborative (BBORC) is a volunteer group that has come together over the last year to understand what they can do as a group to make the Bighorn Basin area a tourist destination for activities rather than just a quick stop on a drive or fly over destination.

According to co-chair Kristi Robison and the organization’s manual, the mission statement for the organization is “to promote, enhance, and develop sustainable outdoor recreation that encourages responsible use, personal well-being, and economic benefit in the Bighorn Basin.”

The group primarily works with the southern and eastern portions of the Bighorn Basin, but attempt to “connect this group to efforts going on elsewhere throughout the Basin.” The representatives of the collaborative come from Worland, Thermopolis, Basin, Ten Sleep, Hyattville, Kirby, Manderson, Lovell and Shell.

The beginning of the BBORC has had a significant learning curve according to one of the other co-chairs, Dusty Lewis, as they have attempted to figure out how to go about projects to work with other entities such as the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) as well as smaller groups working to see their visions come to light.

One of the primary goals of this collaboration is to “develop short and long-term strategies, recommendations, and measurable actions that private interests, the state, and federal partners can implement.”

One such example of a group they have worked with came from the Hot City Outdoor Alliance (HCOA) which is a group that wanted to create a connected mountain biking trail, and is working to promote diverse outdoor activities in Thermopolis.

According to Robison and Lewis, another event that the group worked with this year was the Bad Medicine Ride, which was a mountain biking event around Shell. This event is likely to become an annual event in the coming years and could bring in hundreds of riders to participate.

According to Lewis, it has had a large, positive impact to have so many people with the same goal and energy in the same room; they have wanted to try and make everything happen now. Through this process, they have needed to learn how to step back and find a way to get these goals achieved.

“A lot of this nobody knows how to go about achieving, and we need to slowly navigate and lay a path behind us of how others can follow to get the same things done,” Lewis said. “We have some physical achievements, but I think the processes to make some of that stuff done has been our biggest resounding one (struggle).”

According to Robison, one of the biggest challenges that the BBORC has encountered is the fact that they are a group of volunteers with no budget. This has not stopped them from helping to educate as many people on where the Bighorn Basin is and what activities it can offer recreationally.

“We want to continue building collaborative bridges and partnerships that help promote our region and the businesses and people who live here,” Robison said.

According to Robison, this month the coalition plans to finish defining their metrics and then to figure out what they can do to make their strategic plan a reality.

Future goals according to Lewis, are to bring about a 4x4 trail and other trails that can be used for various purposes throughout the region to help promote activities in the area from Thermopolis to Basin.

The collaboration meets on the first Saturday of each month, but the location of the meeting varies to different locations in the Basin based on what they determine the month prior. The meeting this month will be Saturday at 9 a.m. in Basin at the Big Horn REA building.

The third co-chair for the group is Valarie Anderson.