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SACC Steering Committee Members:
Colorado Wild,
Sierra Nevada Alliance,
Friends of the Inyo,
and Under The Sleeping Buffalo (UTSB) Research (Canada).
Endorsing Organizations:
Save Our Canyons
(UT), The Greater
Yellowstone Coalition, The
Wilderness Society, The Lands
Council, Seventh Generation Fund
for Indian Development, Biodiversity Legal Foundation, Wild Wilderness,Wildlands CPR, Soda Mountain
Wilderness Council, RESTORE: The North Woods,
Conservation Northwest, Siskiyou Regional Education Project,
Wilderness Workshop, Idaho
Conservation League, Colorado Mountain
Club, California Wilderness
Coalition, American Lands
Alliance, WildEarth Guardians, Native Forest Council, and the Western Wildlife
Conservancy.
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Ski Area Environmental Report Card
2009/2010
updated 11/23/2009
In celebration of our 10 year Anniversary, the Scorecard got a long-overdue makeover! Instead of focusing on one general score, the new Report Card has been broken down into four individual categories and an overall score. The four new categories are:
- Habitat Protection
- Protecting Watersheds
- Addressing Global Climate Change
- Environmental Practices and Policies.
The new categories will help skiers and snowboarders get a more accurate and easy to understand picture of the environmental impacts of their favorite ski area's operations.
The Ski Area Environmental Report Card is a non-industry, independent mechanism that gives all outdoor and mountain recreational users, a way to assess the environmental performance and policies of their favorite ski areas and resorts. By making eco-friendly business choices, you can encourage the improvement of environmental business policies and practices.
Other Resources
- Historical Scores are now available for comparison purposes
- New this year is the "Little Ski Areas that Rock" list. Although too small to be graded on the Report Card, these small businesses are an important part of the industry and are frequently outstanding environmental stewards.
- In 2008 we added our own Demographics and Trends Report, looking at the details of growth and future prospects for growth in the ski industry.
- Last year we added the “Compare Ski Areas by Ownership” feature, allowing skiers to research the overall environmental performance of the industry’s biggest players.
About the Ski Area Citizens' Coalition
The Ski Area Citizens' Coalition works to promote environmental stewardship. By evaluating ski area responsiveness to the needs of environmental stewardship, local communities, and the recreational public in a manner that is consistent to changing economic and environmental policies, we can potentially influence current business practices and trends to be increasingly more eco-friendly.
Staff and Volunteers and of SACC are skiers themselves, and recognize skiing and mountain recreations as a valid and great use of public lands. The experiences, enjoyment, and memories that are created through the use of public lands cannot be monetarily measured; they are invaluable. As Theodore Roosevelt noted, “To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we thought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.”
This year the Ski Area Citizens Coalition enlisted the help of an intern from Fort Lewis College, Megan Marshall. Megan a Colorado native, avid skier and environmental studies student assisted in the development, implementation and design for the 2009/2010 scorecard. Her general knowledge of the ski industry and the environment has been a great addition to the team and to the scorecard.
Ski Area Scorecard Highlighted in Academic Studies
George Washington University Professor Jorge Rivera and University of Denver Professor Peter de Leon published a study of ski industry environmental impacts and the National Ski Area Association’s Sustainable Slopes program in the Policy Studies Journal (Vol. 32, No. 3, 2004).
Entitled “Is Greener Whiter? Voluntary Environmental Performance of Western Ski Areas”, the study validated many issues that the conservation community has had of the ski industry’s voluntary environmental program, and confirmed that the Ski Area Environmental Scorecard is an accurate and useful third-party tool to gauge ski resorts’ environmental policies and management. A follow up study published in 2006 titled "Is Greener Whiter Yet? The Sustainable Slopes Program
after Five Years" found similar results.
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