Outdoor Recreation Guidelines Checklist
This comprehensive outdoor recreation guidelines checklist facilitates the safe and phased reopening of parks, public lands, campgrounds, and visitor facilities. It provides a structured framework for managing operations across multiple phases, emphasizing social distancing, sanitation protocols, and interagency coordination among local, state, and federal authorities. The checklist also addresses pre-travel verification of site closures and access restrictions, as well as compliance requirements for guides and outfitters. This resource serves as a planning template and should be tailored to align with applicable local regulations and expert public health guidance.
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How to Use This Checklist
- **Update the header.** Fill in the date conducted, who prepared the assessment, and the location or portfolio covered, so the record is traceable.
- **Work the phases in order.** Begin with the Phase One & Two items on distancing, sanitisation and limited offerings, then move to the Phase Three items on full reopening, and finish with coordination and compliance. Confirm each statement or flag a gap.
- **Capture counts and descriptions.** Record the number of open sites, percentage at full capacity, readiness level, and the free-text descriptions of added measures, remaining restrictions and update methods. These turn a tick-box into a record you can plan from.
- **Verify the closure and access status.** Confirm that visitors can find current closure and restriction information before travelling, and that a system exists to keep it accurate.
- **Sign off.** Complete the signature, finish time and real start and end dates, then review any 'No' answers and assign the next action to a named person with a deadline.
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What the outdoor recreation guidelines checklist is
The checklist is a structured framework for the safe and phased reopening of parks, public lands, campgrounds and visitor facilities. It moves through defined phases, from partial reopening with strict public-health conditions, through fuller operations, and into the coordination and compliance work that keeps those operations consistent. It is written to be tailored: local regulators and expert public health guidance decide what the phases mean in your jurisdiction, and the checklist helps you apply those decisions item by item. It is not a regulation. It does not set a threshold, a number or a standard of its own. What it does is force a disciplined pass over the questions a manager has to answer before opening a site, expanding a service, or keeping an amenity available.
Why it matters
Recreation sites sit at a difficult intersection. People need outdoor access, and a phased approach lets that access continue without spreading infection through shared facilities. The checklist uses five conditions to keep the phases honest: - **Distancing** — areas that cannot practicably enforce it, or cannot meet sanitation needs, stay closed until conditions allow safe operation. - **Sanitation** — facilities that carry shared surfaces need a regular, reviewed protocol, not a one-off clean. - **Limits** — campground offerings, group-use facilities and playgrounds open at the discretion of local and state managers, based on current public-health conditions and capacity. - **Coordination** — local, state and federal officials align on reopening decisions so public messaging is consistent across jurisdictions. - **Notice** — visitors can confirm closures and access restrictions before they travel. Each of these is a question in the checklist rather than an assumption you carry in your head. That is the point: the checklist records that you asked, and what you answered.
What a good assessment covers
A complete pass touches five areas: 1. **Phase One & Two operations** — whether parks and public lands remain open with distancing and sanitising in place, which areas are closed because they cannot meet those conditions, which campground and group facilities are limited, and whether guides and outfitters are working within quarantine travel restrictions. 2. **Public information** — whether visitors can find up-to-date closure and access information before travelling, and how you publish and verify that information. 3. **Phase Three operations** — whether campgrounds, group facilities, playgrounds and visitor centres are open, whether restricted amenities have resumed full service, and the percentage of facilities at full capacity. 4. **Coordination** — whether officials across levels of government are aligned on reopening decisions and on public messaging. 5. **Compliance and recordkeeping** — the safeguards and the audit trail: numbers of sanitisation stations, monthly review of sanitation protocols, remaining restrictions by site or user group, and the signature, dates and time that make the record defensible. The checklist holds a place for each of these. Keep the limits and conditions specific: a percentage, a number of stations, a named restriction is more useful than a general note that conditions apply.
How to carry it out
Start with the identification fields — date, preparer and location — then work the phases in order. For Phase One & Two, confirm each statement on distancing, sanitisation and limited offerings, or flag it. Where an area cannot meet a condition, record it as closed and note the reason. Capture the count of open sites and the free-text description of added measures. For Phase Three, work through the reopened amenities and capture the percentage at full capacity and your readiness level for the transition. Where a restriction remains, record it against the specific area or user group. Finish with coordination and compliance. Check the public information path: can a visitor confirm status before travelling, and is there a system to keep that status current? Then complete the recordkeeping fields — sanitisation-station counts, monthly protocol reviews, signature, finish time and the real start and end dates. Readiness is a judgement, and the checklist supports it by making you name the number rather than estimate it. Book a review date for every item you cannot close, and assign it to a person.
Where regulations and standards fit
The checklist does not cite a standard, and you should not read one into it. It names no OSHA requirement, no ISO clause, no HACCP control. What it does is organise the operational decisions that public health guidance and local regulation require you to make. Use it alongside the rules that apply to your site: local public health orders, land-management rules, and any state or federal guidance on gatherings and shared facilities. Where those say something is closed, the checklist records that you treated it as closed. Where they are silent, the checklist still asks you to state your position, which is what makes it useful when someone later asks why a site was open or shut.
Bringing it into your own practice
The checklist ships as 24 questions across four sections, with Yes/No/N/A answers and room for counts, percentages and descriptions. Treat it as a planning template, not a fixed form: add fields for the conditions your site actually faces, and keep the phase structure so results stay comparable across sites and inspections. The more of the record that lives next to the items it describes — the open-site count, the station count, the remaining restrictions — the less you rely on memory when you review. That is the whole purpose of the tool: to turn a set of operational judgements into a record you can read back, defend, and revise as conditions change.
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