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hey everyone my name is eric garcia i'm one of the three conservation directors serving central nebraska right now thanks for joining us today today we're going to be going over ecotourism in nebraska and how these operations help conserve nebraska's wildlife and the habitats that they inhabit um just some brief information if there's anybody new to our webinars our organization is called conservation nebraska this organization started the common ground program in 2016. this program is dedicated to educating nebraskans across the state about conservation issues um facing these various communities that we are serving in pretty much by hosting educational events like these um and engaging with stakeholders in the community the common ground program has about 20 members currently across the state um serving the just nebraska as a whole and we're considered conservation directors so that's what i am um so once just some logistics before we get into it is once the webinar is done a screen will pop up on your web browser directing you to a survey if you can please complete that whenever you decide to leave we just use that for grant reporting purposes and we'd love to get any feedback that you guys might have so throughout the presentation if you have any questions there is a q a option at the bottom of your screen and there is a chat chat option please put any questions that you might have and those two um little options that you have there if you want to know a little bit more about the information that our guest speakers are going to cover um and then i just want to thank all of our speakers for attending today for dedicating this time to educating some of us on ecotourism um really excited for that um so we're going to start off with our first presenter um her name is katie nyland she currently manages the great plains ecotourism coalition and is the communications coordinator for the center for great plains studies at the university of nebraska at lincoln she will be going over some of the research on ecotourism the center has done and just give you some basic information on ecotourism and what it is essentially so katie you could take it away thanks eric um i'm gonna share my screen here in a second and i of course can supply um any sort of pdfs or links that you see in this presentation um i can give them to eric afterward and you can disperse those things but i'm katie as he said i'm the assistant director and communications coordinator for the center for great plane studies and that's at the university of nebraska and we've been studying ecotourism now for the better part of a decade in case you haven't heard of the center real quick we're regional and interdisciplinary so we look at science and history literature and art all about the great plains and we publish a lot in that subject area as well here is our great plains coverage area and so when i talk about ecotourism i am talking about um the entire great plains not just nebraska but we focused a lot on nebraska in some of our research so first i'll talk a little bit about what our definition of ecotourism is it can be different for everybody but we like to look at it as nature-based tourism and travel that really improves the well-being of local communities and really deepens one's engagement with nature and conserves the environment at the same time so there's this interplay between an educational aspect a nature activity something that really like spurs curiosity about the natural world um and interest in it and that it's just maybe a little bit deeper of appreciation for land and and what we can do on them so ecotourism sites that we have been looking at in the great plains in nebraska they are usually places you can see wildlife photograph hike bike um learn about the natural environment and the best examples are those ones that really connect the traveler to the land what is this grass what is this animal why is it important what is this flower used for historically it's really that educational element that we like to promote that really takes it to the next level some sites we're seeing even offer volunteer options that help support and sustain those communities there and really add to their experience so ecotourism is kind of a interesting aspect when we're looking at the great plains and we like to look at it from our conservation viewpoint nowadays the great plains is one of the least protected ecosystems on the planet there's different estimates but some say that around one to three percent of the tall grass prairie remains that's mostly in the eastern part of the great plains um but around you know there's definitely a need to protect what remains of our great plains natural landscape and we like ecotourism as a method to do that because it really combines conservation with business and economics and local communities and really tries to put everybody on the same page about some of these issues that's especially important in nebraska because it's around 93 percent of the land in the state that is privately held so there's a landowner a farmer or a rancher or a just a private landowner that has the land so there's not as much public conservation um that we can do on it so we have to find a way to work with these private landowners to do conservation in a way that makes sense for them um and helps them out as well as helping travelers you know enjoy the natural scenery here um so we when we were looking to study ecotourism in nebraska we actually like expanded our search um for other models of ecotourism around the world and found in namibia they were doing this really cool conservation that involved landowners and business and so we looked at a lot of that and a lot of the research i'll show you here in a second has to do with that but the basic idea there is that the more they take care of the land the more animals and plants that can live there the more tourists that arrive the more money that they make so they become stewards of the land we actually have a lot of similarities there um so that's our pronghorn on the left there with an african counterpart and antelope and then we have um our jackal their jackal and our coyote down at the bottom so it's kind of cool to see those counterparts and talk about what we can maybe learn from their model so we've recently published some research in this area and found that working with professor larkin powell here at the university of nebraska who is really a great bird expert and has been studying ecotourism for many many many years he found that visitors to these ecotourism locations are typically domestic visitors from the us they lean female they have families and they're really motivated by some of these outdoor activities a peaceful setting and heritage which really means they want to learn about what was on this land what is going on now they they want to really um get an idea for the the scenery and the place and the people that live there most he found in his studies that most of those tourists um only travel about 50 to 150 miles um to get to their destination so there really needs to be an easy way for people to get places so that is really tied to highway infrastructure automobile use whether there's places to stay but there is this new segment of long distance tourists that are really traveling um long long distances and staying longer and i was doing a little bit of extra research about like how is the pandemic affecting these tourists um and it appears to be that the great american road trip is somewhat making a comeback whether that's a good idea or not it does appear to be somewhat of a trend um and it's possible it could stick around even after the pandemic so i pulled some information that said uh during the week preceding the july 4th holiday americans made 32.2 million trips of more than 50 miles and that's compared to 31.9 million in the same period in 2019. so um road trips you know could be in the the long distance travel could be something to think about for ecotours and providers so professor powell um kind of looked at factors like distance the density like how many eco tours and spots there were in one area and also rainfall levels and then created this map to tell us like where might there be potential for eco-tourist spots or eco-tourists to go visit um and so those dark areas are places where there are existing ecotourism operations and low levels of precipitation now he looked at rainfall because less rainfall generally means fewer row crops so that means more habitat for animals and lake ranching operations instead of corn and soybean operations there's a little bit more potential for eco-tourists where there's still grasslands so he came up with this map now there are actually some fantastic ecotourism spots in the white areas but these ones were just for short-term travelers so people who wanted to string a bunch of spots together so i think that's important when looking at this map they would have more opportunity to do so now for the people who really wanted to like spend a long time in a place they might just pick one or two spots and they'd be much more open to traveling long distances so there's really there's quite a few different types of travelers um and i have this piece which was published in one of our journals um a year ago or so and i can get that anybody who wants the full piece um i can get that for you too he also looked at some research on what kind of amenities and features that ecotourists might be looking for he collected this data and it is available in a booklet um that i can send those who are interested but um it's basically like people would like you know some sort of nature activity whether it's self-guided or guided and then some sort of view whether it's like a new landscape or just learning about um the current landscape that they're in they're looking for a bunch of different things um and i really think some from from some of the ecotourism spots that i visited in nebraska and the wider great plains there's lots of things for people to do here and it's really exciting um to actually get out there and experience them um professor powell also found some difficulties when operating an eco tourist spot including nearby support structure infrastructure facilities getting food shipped in things like that and that um you know people would need to learn some skills like marketing customer relations which can be learned it just takes time to do so um so we started this great plains ecotourism coalition in 2014 as a home base for our eco tourism project and we were committing to promoting conservation through building this network of eco-tourism spots we put 39 spots together some of them most of them are places you can visit but some of them are just people who support ecotourism and that's available on our website if you guys wanted to check out that and then we supplied these places with some things like marketing including our great planes poster series a guidebook there's a map of the top 50 ecotourism spots in the great plains if you ever wanted to take an awesome road trip brochures and things like that we published a couple books on them and then a guidebook format um for anybody who's interested it's sort of like a menu for visiting our uh individual ecotourism coalition members that's pretty fun too uh beyond larkin's research um we also created this uh liability for landowners research um which was super helpful and we've been doing some workshops um across nebraska as well in 2017 we ran a study on the economic impact of the sandhill cranes in kearney and these are some of the cool statistics that i pulled out um the main one being 14.3 million in economic impact in a 13 county area so that was pretty cool it shows like a real life example of how and admittedly a very cool ecotourism spot this giant migration impacts the local community but of course smaller operations can also impact individuals and families here is our website visittheprairie.com we also have some social media we try to tell some stories about ecotourism we have a map for people who want to explore some of these sites that we've been in contact with um and we also held a large conference on it um in 2018 which was uh pretty awesome and we have some publications um from that too but the easy spot um to get everything is just that um visit the prairie.com or our unl website there on the right hand side and so that is sort of everything we've been working on in the ecotourism sphere i can definitely take questions after we're all done thanks eric sweet thank you so much that was a lot of awesome information that you provided for everyone and so yeah if you have any questions just put them in the q a option or the chat option and we can get to those after everybody has gotten the chance to present um so our second presenter now is jenna um varjay um jenna is a adventure travel specialist with the nebraska tourism commission today she will be going through some of the resources visit nebraska has available to anyone looking into starting their own eco-tourism operation um so jenna you can take it away from here thank you eric let me get my little screen chair going all right um so as eric said i'm with um nebraska tourism commission i'm out of lincoln um and um my position my role within nebraska tourism um is under the fancy title of adventure travel specialists which is basically a fancy way of saying that i look at the um nature-based assets in the state as far as their potential for tourism purposes so a lot of that is um you know highlighting and development and marketing of our existing um like ecotourism operations or adventure travel operations um and then also looking at um potential to further develop um some of those wonderful natural assets that we do have here in nebraska so to start off i kind of wanted to start by giving everyone a little clip of our annual report from 2019 um uh oftentimes in conversations with nebraskans um it's really funny that uh you know our own communities sometimes feel like nebraska doesn't have much to offer or that it's not some place worth visiting and um i mean that just could not be further from the truth and i think that these numbers and um kind of help to bear that out and maybe give some people some perspective on the impact that tourism does have on our communities here in nebraska um so uh 2019 numbers of course you know this was the annual report that we put out from 2018's um data that we collected um so visitor spending totaled uh 3.4 billion dollars um tourism industry within nebraska created over 40 000 jobs within the state which generated more than 240 million dollars of in-state state and local taxes um to help drive our communities and um you know spur economic development um and then um just for a lot of tourism people they like to have a number for heads and beds like county people overnighted we had 6.4 million individuals that overnighted so that planned or stayed overnight in nebraska in our hotels and lodging facilities um last year okay so a little bit more about us as the tourism commission so our team is small but mighty um and we um you know we each kind of have um our very individual um programs but that makes us a really dynamic team um all of us are a resource um you know reading down the list um john rex our director kind of thinks big picture and um you know he you know his job is to promote nebraska as a state and uh and help all of us to promote the individual assets that we're involved in um you know helping bring to light and and helping to promote um cali austen joined on a little bit after i did um and she is our industry relations specialist so she's kind of her job is to kind of work with um our cvbs our our um county visitor bureaus um address their needs um you know make sure that we're getting them you know the adequate resources that they really need to thrive and survive um throughout nebraska and then there's me i've already kind of mentioned what i do um michael collins he's our group tour coordinator so he would be the guy that you would call if you have the capacity and the desire to maybe um potentially have group tours come through he can uh he he will kind of create these itineraries typically um and he does a lot o the source work himself so he'll typically approach you but um if you have a feeling that you don't know his face or um that that you'd like to get to know him better um give him a call he's a great fun guy um super great to work with has been um he's also been here a really long time so he has really thorough knowledge of the state and and um you know knows a lot of people noza um knows his way around um jen jordy is our as our marketing manager so again um she is involved really closely with john and our campaign work so recently we launched a new campaign um to kind of rebrand nebraska we want to get the the word out that this is a really great state to come and visit we have um you know a lot of great things to offer and uh we're kind of you know we're kind of we've flown under the radar maybe for for years um and this campaign has largely been pretty successful in its reach um so um yeah so jen works jen and john they they do a lot with um with things like that um how there is our deputy director and she's also our grant administrator um so we do offer yearly um grants and i'll get into those a little bit more here in just a second so i'll just kind of skip over that but we will circle back to that um karen callers is our agritourism consultant so she's kind of my counterpart um you know adventure travel it can intersect with ecotourism and agritourism i mean you know a lot of these aren't pinned down and really narrow in their definitions there's a lot of intersectionality and um and kind of what we do and how we help people but um again been in the um been working for nebraska tourism for 15 years plus and has a really great knowledge of the state um and it's just a wonderful resource and a wonderful person to um to get a hold of if you're looking at um starting or developing agri-tourism operation and she's also really pretty thoroughly she's got just really thorough knowledge of liability law and things like that as far as you know that goes for making sure that your business is protected um first and foremost you you want to make sure that you and your business are protected from um from liability aaron lenz is our um she's our public information officer so she um she does a lot of our press releases she works on our website um social media i don't know how she sleeps i feel like she she is like constantly busy and um you know doing all the techie stuff that none of the rest of us are uh i will speak for myself that i'm not great at but she does a really good job um um of doing that and she she will also organize um press trips so we'll we'll invite members of um the you know the press to come and experience itinerarized trips within the state so again usually those are regional um will hit multiple assets um and then those those writers will then go and create content and you know based on their experiences which um elevates and highlights what nebraska has to offer and so that's a really again big important part of how we um can help you to get your name out there and um and elevate your business madison johnson is our passport program coordinator and for those of you that don't know what the password program is we'll go over that a little bit too in just a minute um so i won't spend too much time here but she essentially that's her baby it's a big program we get a lot of participation um it is something that um right now is marketed in states so we're we're trying to drive um tourism um you know kind of in and around our state to some of the more remote areas more rural communities um maybe new businesses that have popped up or hidden gems that just not a lot of people know about in the state um so every year she selects 70 stops to be part of the passport program and um you can participate by um uh getting your app or um a booklet mailed to you and i'll like i said i'll cover that a little bit more in just a second um alicia simonson is our accountant no explanation necessary we all gotta have one and then surely um she's our administrative assistant and um you know helps she's kind of the glue that holds our office staff together and kind of make sure that we're all keeping our sanity and staying on track within our respective goals and um and interdisciplinary subject fields okay so what we do um you know i kind of talked about who we are and and what each of us does but this is kind of a rundown of um the things that we do um you know big picture for nebraska tourism so we we market as we market nebraska as a tourism destination um we do that through a targeted ad campaign and this is you know through commercials through print through social media the whole kind of nine yards um we have a website which we recently recalled when we um rebranded um two years ago a year ago a year ago um and um so that's kind of our biggest and best resource for listing all of um the assets in our this the state and so that includes ecotourism resources um restaurants um you know bed and breakfast the whole the whole nine yards you know if it's a place to that you want to go and stay sleep enjoy yourself um have an adventure you know chances are it's listed on our website and if you're not i can kind of show you where we where you can get listed i'm here in a second um like i mentioned social media we do it we do produce a state travel guide yearly so um uh we list um all of our listings from our website do make an appearance in that guide you we do also offer um paid advertisement in that travel guide um so if you are interested in that you can check i can show you where you can find out more about that on our website um media tours i kind of touched on that as something that aaron and jen typically organize um where we invite journalists um you know to come and experience uh preset itineraries that we um a really fun you know usually it's a few days time and um you know we try and fit on as many fun things as we can for them to experience and enjoy in nebraska and then they write about it and it appears in their public publications that they work for if they freelance you know um it could pop up in um you know different publications just depending on who decides to pick up their stories um public relations that's erin um group tours that's michael i'm travel counselor program that's also michael um this year with coved we um we actually did not hire travel counselors but we typically do um set aside money in our budget to hire a staff that will staff certain visitor centers throughout the state that can give people information about um you know what they can see and do when they come so a lot of a lot of we get a lot of traffic on i-80 um that comes through and our travel counselors try and convince people to get off i-80 see some of the rest of the state um you know maybe spend the night um you know and enjoy themselves a little bit more rather than just burning on through um so that is a really important program and we hope to have that up and running again back next year um so support for our tourism industry partners so you know we do a lot of marketing for the state as a whole but we also are here to serve our industry partners and our um um you know they're kind of the lifeblood of what makes nebraska tourism tick you know without all you wonderful people out there um you know taking a chance and um you know entrepreneuring a business or a startup um or some kooky idea um you know we wouldn't we wouldn't have the cool stuff that we have to offer so um we try and offer you resources through our industry resources page which i'm about to take us through and just kind of show you where that content lives and how to navigate that a little bit um we also um cali has started offering monthly webinars which we've we put a time out on because we during covet because we there's a lot of webinars going on right now so instead of us doing those um like we were for the past year we've we've been supplementing content that we have access to um through us travel through larger larger industry resources um kind of above and beyond you know what we can unprovide and that again gives great information to kind of get people through this really trying time um so we do uh publicize those uh webinars and they live on our um they also live on our website in perpetuity so any past webinar that you're curious about you can go back look watch it check it out shoot people emails with questions um so those are continued resources that we have um we do have an annual tourism conference this is mostly for our our industry members and like it's we typically get a lot of visitor bureau attendance but we wanted we want to broaden that we really want to try and um you know we're trying to broaden our content more and more to make it more accessible for our small business owners for our ecotourism operations or our you know pumpkin patches or things like that too you know it's um we want to make it accessible for anyone that wants to come and participate in that so we're continually uh trying to kind of push the um the envelope for for content and and broadening our horizon as far as um what we offer through that conference um we uh myself and karen callers the agritourism consultant we also put on a yearly agritourism and adventure travel workshop and that is typically more focused toward your ego tourism operations your agritourism operations um we had we held an award um the first year that i worked in this position so 2018 uh 2019 excuse me and then um this past february held it in nebraska city um and it's it's we bounce around we try and you know visit communities where we can then branch out and see some of like actually visit some of the um uh tourism assets in the area and um get behind the scenes knowledge of what makes um what makes successful uh tourism operations tick and um you know people get the opportunity to ask questions and exchange just um you know general knowledge and um you know what's worked what hasn't and i think it's it's it's been a really good resource um in the past um um forced for our industry members um the passport program i'll get into that a little bit more um grants i'll get into that a little bit more and i'm consulting that is mostly through um you know any one of us from our staff are really happy to help um but if you specifically have something with really that relates to ecotourism i'm your gal um if it's agri-tourism karen can help we usually can both help we usually do both help um and whether that is you know you're just starting out you're wondering where to start your you know how to write your business plan or you know what your business model should look like um or if you're going through growing pains and you know you need to kind of have someone externally assess um you know uh potential things that could that could help you get past um you know a junction that you're that you're in and you're in your business um so that i'm going to take us to the website did that pop up did the website pop up for everyone can you guys no okay let me do a new screen share stop share let's do are we there yet all right awesome okay so this is our website um it's visit nebraska.com and scroll all the way down to the bottom past all these beautiful pictures and all this funny copy to our industry link which is all the way the bottom kind of hidden not meant to be but that is where as an industry member as an ecotourism operator within nebraska this is where you're going to find access to most resources for your business and i've already kind of talked about our conferences and workshops but let's let's talk a little bit more about our grant programs that we offer so um each year we we offer um uh you know two grants um one is a community impact grant and one is a tourism marketing grant um the tourism marketing grant has a lower threshold for the amount of dollars that you can request and the dollars need to go toward you guessed it marketing um for your business um you can view the guidelines here and um again heather hogue is the one who um can answer any and all uh grant questions and she's just fabulous she's one of the nicest humans alive so um like i'll already share our staff page again so if you need to write down someone's number or email you'll have the opportunity to do so a community impact grant is a much larger grant with a bigger um you know bigger pot of money that we can distribute but we typically have much fewer applicants for um for this um because you know this is typically something that um is an event that maybe your community region puts on that truly draws um from outside of the state so you know this is a this is a big event a big attraction um you know raises you know big community dollars um and um so this one is um one that i have helped to navigate some um just this past year helped navigate a community impact grant for um the nebraska flyway region so um we've got the sandhill cranes as katie mentioned which is this amazing natural occurrence that happens every year in nebraska and brings lots and lots of people to come and witness that but it doesn't just affect one community it affects several communities and the way the cranes are flying these days they're kind of going further and further you're seeing them further and further west so you know now we have more opportunities for partnership um in different counties coming together and saying let's let's have a unified approach to marketing this you know instead of being um kind of really limited within our county and marketing it within our county let's market it regionally since like it is a regional occurrence um so that those are the types of things that make really good candidates for our community impact grant [Music] let's go back um our webinars like i said they're listed here so um you can 2020 webinars 2019 webinars um it's a mixed you know it's a mixed bag we do marketing webinars we do sneak peeks of our workshops or conferences um how to produce videos on a string business budget i mean it's really um a mixed bag and we're very open to um you know soliciting uh content for those so if you have an idea or you want to learn about something email us and we will try our best to to get someone um who can give a webinar on that subject or that content as a resource for you guys um we we tried to do we were doing those monthly prior to covet and like i said we're now sharing webinars but they're just not um they're not the same content but that they were um you know five months ago so they'll return to normal eventually um the nebraska travel guide listings business rules so that just kind of walks you through like what you need to do in order to be listed in our travel guide as a um as a tourism um entity in nebraska we've got an industry resources page here which um tourism has a tourism market application it's got some related organizations so it links to related organizations that you may not know of that you may want to become a part of um you know uh as far as as far as networking goes i mean kind of um you know that's that's that's our bread and butter you know you know uh learn from learn from your neighbor as much as you can and um and we like to information share so um we do link to a lot of our partners a lot of other associations within the state and i think if i keep going there maybe and it might be on a different page there's a lot of them guys okay um look there the great plain zika tourism coalition on our on our website um nebraska scenic byways economic development i think there's something okay there's not anything it's on a different little link here okay so lots of good resources and links to other organizations that you may wish to be part of or learn more about there we have statistics and reports so if you're curious about lodging tax dollars and your reports are going to be in there we just recently piloted a nebraska tourism mentorship program um if you um as a business would like to mentor someone who might be interested in working in you know in some aspect of hospitality or tourism um you know management um there's information in there that you can look at out look up about how to apply to be a mentor it's um it's it's free it's a great way for us to kind of funnel students coming out of um you know our university systems uh p rtner them with experts in the field so that they can have a head start um and some real you know real life expectations about what the industry is like when they head into the the field um agritour has been adventure travel resources so we have karen's info my info and then a few links here we are also um we've got a handbook here that um it's dated it was printed in 2014 or 2015 and we just put it up on the website so this kind of takes you through um the planning process for if you're interested in starting an adventure travel ecotourism agritourism operation really kind of any type of small tourism business if you're if you're interested in you know how to start one what goes into it this is a great place to start um we are updating this handbook so um we're in the process of going through and taking out the old and putting in some new um putting in lots of of additional great resources and um links to and things that will make your life that much easier so that you don't feel like you're just all on your own not knowing what to do but really wanting to make some more money or start making some money doing something cool and fun in our state uh so that's that what else i said i was gonna um okay so show you all how to list yourselves on the nebraska the visit nebraska website so this is one of the things that is the easiest way to put your business on the map as far as um you know a free a free resource um if you don't have your business currently listed or your event listed on our website you just go here and if you don't have one yet you request a new account so right there um i think my screen is sharing i hope it is but you hit the log in button and then you'll instead of trying to log in first time you'll just request a new account it'll take you to this request for account and that will come to us and we'll reach out and we'll kind of help you navigate through the really simple process to get your business listed on our website um and um you know we have we have a lot of traffic to our website being the state um um you know being the state website we um we can really uh really broaden your reach more often than not um so that's a really the first and best easy way to kind of get your name out there and again we've got staff contacts and the like i want to spend the last couple minutes i think talking about the passport program because that is something that is currently still happening this year this summer hasn't been canceled still going on um and it's another really i'm gonna share my screen again um [Music] okay [Music] okay so the nebraska passport and their website is nebraskapassport.com it's linked from our it's linked from visit nebraska um but it is its own separate site um and it's pretty self-explanatory you've got um you know links for how to order your passport um results so how many people in the state completed all 70 stops how many people got 50 how many people got 25. um you know what those we offer fun little prizes and incentives for people to get out and enjoy themselves and visit the state um and this is another great way to um to market or advertise your business because it's another free program that we offer so all you have to do is apply and you um you do there are some requirements and so you can i think the requirements i might have passed them already um impact i think it was up here [Music] like i said madison johnson she is the she's a sweetheart she's the passport program coordinator if you have any questions feel free to reach out to her um she may not have the link posted because applications aren't open right now currently um but they'll open back up when the season ends which is typically labor day weekend but we've extended that um uh this year um so the passport program you know features 70 stops every year you can apply more than once chances are you may not be featured in back-to-back years but if you if you have a really cool um business then we would love to feature you more than once um it may it may just be a couple years after you initially um come on and um participate we i can't tell you how many people just rave about the traffic that this brings to their business and because nebraskans it's a fairly well-known program now um that people are uh die hard into it and um there's some people that you know do this you know they get 70 stops every year um and so it's it's really a way and we and we we when we when choosing the stops we really do try and look at the whole state regionally we don't want a super hefty concentration of stops just in omaha lincoln even though there's so much there we're the whole point of this program is to get people out maybe to places that they haven't visited before um to our hidden to the hidden gems of nebraska and so i couldn't i couldn't sing more praise about the passport program and um you know uh all the wonderful things that it can do for you and your business i would encourage you to apply um look come back to the website and check in in october or email lovelymadisonjohnson and with your questions and she's always super happy to help um let's go back to stop let's go back to go okay so that was kind of the rundown of our website resources why can't i go on to the next okay i have a have a slide for questions um eric kind of said let's save those for the end maybe or put those in the comments um here is our staff again if anyone wants to write down contact information i'll just leave that up and um i think yeah that was it awesome thank you so much jenna uh also a lot of great information thank you for that um so now we're going to transition to our final speaker for the evening uh sarah sortim um she and her family operate calamus outfitters and nature-based tourism operation and the in the beautiful calamus river basin in north central nebraska today she'll be talking a little more about her family operation and give you a glimpse um into a local equal eco tourist destination so take it away sarah hey thank you thanks eric um yeah this is my family um so you know it's a family affair sort of a deal so i had to picture them let me why is it not letting me forward hold on just a sec maybe try um using the keyboard or um use your mouse okay thank you for that tip basically a very quickly my family's been here on the ranch since 1904 and then uh just as a pretty typical ranch we started our tourism operation in 2001 and i would say we started our eco-tourism operation in about 2005 um and i'll talk about the the difference uh later and then uh by 2006 my family were all back on the ranch so that was our goal our family goal is to uh stay on the land um together as a family um and part of our goal as a family is to manage and conserve that natural resource that we have so that it has lots of potential and opportunities for future generations so that's that's what we operate under i just want to mention quickly that no matter what business you're in i think planning is really important and a lot of times ecotourism operations are on um they're taking place on land that probably has other businesses uh happening on that same piece of ground as well so you need to think about that from different perspectives especially liability so for us you know our eco tourism operation and activities takes place on our ranch that our ranching activities take on so it's just how that all kind of interplays together and it is something to think about um we've chosen to go with limited liability companies but there's lots of different options out there um just to think about i just threw this in there because obviously there's a lot of different roles that we all take on but again it seems like a lot of agribusiness and ecotourism opportunities involve families and so you know communication and transparency is super important um for long-term success i'd say so you know you all have many hats but you got to come together and make really good smart um decisions by consensus so for our family what we try and do is make decisions and not fights we let the birds fight and they're fun to watch people fights not so fun to watch so um we basically look at four things when we make decisions and this goes for our ranching operation it goes for our tourism operation and our eco-tourism activities so we look is it obviously it's a business are we going to make money you know we we have to make money is it sustainable in that way how does it affect our production and services is it will it benefit the quality will it take our quality away so we look at that our conservation as we have as i mentioned conservation is very important as far as um our land management practices go so how will it affect uh that conservation and then our quality of life um we decided we wanted to raise our kids here so you know if it affects that quality of life that that factors into the decision so when all those um things come together it really helps us to make a decision is this the way to go or or not so that's just an example from my family so our tourism operation is called calamus outfitters we do different things we have lodging we do our spring bird watching and in the summer we have river trips i do my jeep tours pretty much year-round and then we have some event space as well so eric asked me to talk just a little bit about how we view our tourism models and i would like to share how we try at least to create a memorable experience for our visitors so we do some different kinds of tourism we do river trips so right now that's really popular here in the summer and you know i would not consider this an ecotourism activity i consider it a nature based activity this is a high volume low interaction activity so we get a lot of people it's high volume there's no guides um you know there's not a lot there's no interpretation there's no education um it's a great activity and it's kind of a novelty then we have you know we promote our star gazing so this is gonna be a low volume and also low um interaction uh we don't offer guided uh stargazing but we certainly promote our wonderful dark skies so it's just a different a different model that we also employ and then we do our spring bird watching and this is a low volume guess but high high interaction everything's guided uh lots of education um you know we're with these people a lot um and so it's a different model it's it's low volume but but high interpretation and so your price point is different because of that um you know this package price point is a lot higher than our river trip price point because of all of our time um and our guides expertise into making that that experience and i love the the uh the bottom right picture by the way because look at that that was a cold morning and we had a great time you know it was just fabulous and of course they're coming to see these awesome dudes which i had to throw those pictures in there the chickens in the grouse as i said i do um jeep tours pretty much year round i love the jeep tours for our bird watching especially because they are super super interested in what kind of habitats the bird utilize that they've traveled a long ways to see this bird they want to know everything about it and so it's a great opportunity to tell stories and i think that for for my operation is what creates that memorable experience it's the storytelling and helping people experience things so that it relates back to what they care about so they care about this bird well when we go out on a jeep tour i will stop and i'll pick out a plant and relate it to how this plant is very important in the life cycle of this particular bird that they travel all the way out here to see and maybe they can even taste the same plant or something like that so it's the storytelling i think that really creates a really memorable experience and as far as ecotourism and you know storytelling i think is so so important um it's just it's how you can you can know a lot of knowledge you can know a lot of facts that are really good but if you can't get those across in a very meaningful way it's it's not very uh fun and it's not very memorable so storytelling is really high in my book again you know you can i still i tell stories about a lot of different things from bear sands to lizards to to whatever so uh it's it's what keeps me going and it's what i love um so it's it's a good time uh really quickly on our revenue um now this is the countless outfitters business in the entirety so you can see kind of the tan orange um segment that is our lodging and so that's our biggest uh money maker and that's obviously from year round okay that's that's from 12 months of lodging the green segment of the pie that is just from our bird washing so that is pure ecotourism purely ecotourism revenue that's contributing to the to the pie and what i think is really significant for our business is to remember that our spring bird watching is only about a month and a half long that's it so that month and a half really contributes a lot to our overall bottom line the blue is our river trips in the summer and the rest you can kind of see hashes out you'll notice that in the red my jeep tours doesn't look like they contribute a lot but for me for my family it's really meaningful because the revenue i derive off of my jeep tours it's about it's my family's grocery money i have a family of four and it pretty much buys my groceries for the year so for me it's really a meaningful contribution our biggest expenses uh payroll which we like because that's why we have the business to benefit people we like to hire local people we hire a lot of summer kids you know local kids that are coming back from college or high school kids and some of that peril goes to myself and my brother which in the ranching business it's a novel idea to pay yourself we do this with this business and it's been great and then of course insurance is another big expense but it's needed you gotta have it in whatever business you're in just looking at it a little bit differently i threw all the the revenue together i only separated out lodging and activities so that you could see when our revenue comes in and you can see january february is non-existent uh oh there's the bird watchers in march and april there they are may we kind of dip down a little bit we get some fishermen not too much july is our summer business right now this is our busiest week of the entire summer this week it's awesome we're making hay while the sun shines it's awesome and then it dips back down in the fall so you know there's a lot of different options we feel like there's opportunity to build on the shoulder seasons if we want to it goes back to quality of life is it the right time for that for our family well we need to sit down and talk about that but there's room for growth as you can see quickly some lessons learned this this picture of myself is in a hot air balloon uh same place that katie had a picture of over in navi brand one of my favorite places on earth uh because it really inspired me to get into ecotourism but anyways the first uh lesson i've learned came from the founder of this nature reserve in namibia and he said all you need is the right attitude and i just think that's so important uh he was a huge pioneer in ecotourism and and he really um believed that it can really provide a lot of jobs it can provide and improve a lot of livelihoods and really you can get into it as much as you want but it doesn't take a lot to get into it you can have a very low um capital um you know venture just to get into it and still have a really viable business definitely saw over there and have and you know we're living it here that tourism and conservation is very compatible they can go hand in hand really really smoothly um and easily um i think ecotourism for me personally has really opened my eyes that absolutely everything has value everything from the knowledge in your head to the sunset in the sky to the grain of sand under your feet everything has value and i will say that the partnerships that we've gained over the years have been absolutely fantastic and have really helped us out along the way really quickly about conservation basically we want diversity we want the healthiest resource we can have we feel like the the healthier our re ource is the more opportunities it holds and the more potential it holds so we want um healthy and diverse for us we picked focal species of prey chickens and grouse because they're really important to our business and that's something that ecotourism does is it puts value on that wildlife or whatever it is that that is um drawing people to you and so whenever something has value you manage for it uh so definitely these birds even though we've always enjoyed them they're on the forefront of our mind in every management decision that we make on the ranch because they're very very important for us and they've done a lot for our family we do monitor them every year we have a census that we just do in-house every year just for our own information overlay that with our ranch practices and see if we have any trends that pop up and make make adjustments that are needed so that's what i have so i know we're a little short on time so i'll step off and see if we have any questions awesome thank you so much for that information um i've never had the chance to go there but i'm really thinking about it now it looks really cool um yeah so if anybody has any questions uh now's your time um someone did have a question earlier um question from crystal to i think jenna um are the 2019 webinars on visit nebraska available to view um like are they recorded i guess yes there so if you go to the industry page so you get a screw you go to visit nebraska.com you scroll all the way down to the bottom you click industry you go to webinars there'll be like a different grid you know a page of grids one will be webinars if you scroll down you'll get to um webinars from from from longer ago so the most recent webinars are up top the older ones are down low they're all recorded um they're right for the picking awesome um i guess i just had like um a few questions but i could just yeah ask them as people are like um asking questions but um what is um one of the biggest challenges um you all would say um like right now that ecotourism has well i would say at least for us i would say that [Music] the land that we are on as far as that we operate our ecotourism operations on is just it has a lot of pressures on it there's a lot of pressures on the great plains in general um it's expected to produce a lot you know food energy um you know recreation it's all it's a lot and i think that um you know there's some really good things going on out there but it is worthy of careful planning i do believe so that we can you know look into the future and try and make really smart decisions that will benefit all these different segments because we need all these things um but do it in a way that is mutually beneficial second what sarah said and just kind of add that you know these pressures they exist and there is a tipping point and there's a word for that which is over tourism and so if you're careful and you're continually evaluating your business model like sarah and her family do and you know you can you're in control you can you can make those decisions needed to know when um you know when one step is too much um and that could be for your family that could be for the land um and and and that is always something to be cognizant of when entering into this type of business um so there's a question from crystal um for sarah do you have any other guidance on setting price points other than the level of interaction required uh price points have been one of our biggest challenges it's really hard especially if you come from an agricultural background because you usually don't set your own price usually you you know you get what the market will bear for your product so when we first started um and still we struggle with that and all that right or wrong all that we did when we first got started was just try to reach out to other operations and just gauge you know what are they providing and what are they charging and uh people have asked me that um a lot and i'm happy to share that information because i know how hard it is um to do that so you know we basically looked at you know what are we offering as far as um equipment you know the cost that goes into that um our time our expertise um you know just all the inputs what what are all the inputs and try and come up with a price that is both fair to us and fair to our our customer and i honestly feel like overall our price points are probably a little low quite honestly but as a family that's what we're comfortable with right now as a family that might change someday but it's important for us we would rather be full um rather and have a lower price point then price ourselves out um and have less people but that's a decision you know there's all sorts of possibilities yeah um that's a good point that you made i guess is there's just like really no method i guess to put value on to like nature and the environment it's like scattered all over the place um but yeah i don't see any other questions that people are um bringing in but i don't know if you guys had anything else that you wanted to say real quick or if you were good i guess the only thing i would add is i think one of the exciting things about ecotourism is anybody can do it and you can almost do it anywhere almost you know you don't have to own a ranch you don't have to be close to a big state wreck area you can go to a park and do ecotourism you know it's it's a really fun interactive way to create an experience and you know the the benefits are you know there's just so many things you can do you know with the revenue that comes in not only does it support your livelihood but it can go right back into your passion you know that people that are in ecotourism are passionate usually about specific things in in nature what have you and you can fuel that passion and that's why i just think it's a really exciting little segment of tourism i think that uh sarah made a great point about storytelling and it's something that i talk to people a lot not just storytelling but talking about like how ecotourism itself is like such a changing experience for people no matter at what level they do it it sort of gets you out of your normal day-to-day life it gets you out of these rooms and these screens and really changes your perspective on so many things and i've been to sarah's ranch and it it was pretty impactful so even if you're doing something small i would just really encourage people to get out there and see the rest of the state and the wider great plains because at the center for great plane studies we're always talking about like we're a little bit of a forgotten part of the country but you really don't need mountains and beaches to have an amazing environmental experience awesome uh thank you all very much um so i just wanted to say thank you to everyone who's attending right now um and many thanks to our three great speakers today uh you're all doing amazing work in advancing conservation in nebraska honestly and it's really really appreciated um just like knowing that uh you three are women and it's like it's it's really awesome that you guys are doing this work and it sets a really good example for like future leaders in our state and in the us so thank you for that um so just a remember reminder to everyone attending uh when you leave uh the meeting the webinar there will be a link that pops up on your web um webpage and so just complete that survey for us it'll be awesome um but yeah thank you all um please stay safe healthy um yeah thanks to eric for putting this together thank you yeah you got a dynamite you got some dynamite gals here yeah everyone thank you have a good night thank you you