ENDOW’s missing piece – People do not come to Wyoming to look at oil and gas wells.

On New Year’s Eve, the executive council of Governor Mead’s Economically Needed Diversity Options for Wyoming committee released its first report on its deliberations. Early last year, the governor assembled this brain trust to look for ways to stop the "boom-and-bust" cycle that has defined Wyoming’s economy for most of the last century.

In the preface of the report, the committee recognized five "economic engines" in Wyoming: data services, advanced manufacturing, agriculture, energy/minerals, entrepreneurism, and tourism/outdoors. In the subsequent recommendations and discussion, the tourism/outdoors sector was never mentioned again. Of the five recommendations the committee made, only its recommendation to "improve and expand Wyoming’s commercial air service" was in any way related to tourism, and even that connection was distant and does nothing to protect or enhance the foundation on which Wyoming’s tourism and recreation industry is based.

Steps to enhance Wyoming’s outdoor recreation that won’t cost money:

ENDOW’s missing piece