This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

The Outdoor Retailers Association's annual trade shows — summer and winter editions — have been coming to Utah for a long time because, despite complaints about limited facilities, a dearth of hotel rooms and goofy liquor laws, it's just the perfect place for it.

Skiing, hiking, mountain biking, white-water rafting, stealing away to some of the most beautiful vistas and skies on the planet. It's all here. Which naturally attracts folks who make and sell the equipment that residents and visitors want to buy and take with them into the wild.

But, despite both the natural setting and the many man-made expansions of the Salt Palace Convention Center, some leaders of the outdoor industry have come to feel so unwelcome here that they want to leave.

They have a point.

But those of us who agree with the outdoor industry's basic complaint — that too many elected officials have the wrong idea about where the sustainable future of the state lies — are hoping that the companies that outfit skiers, bikers and hikers around the world will stand and fight.

Many Utah elected officials are out to commandeer millions of acres of federal lands and push back against the recent designation of the Bears Ears National Monument. To some, continuing to hold the outdoor industry trade show in such a place makes about as much sense as putting on a vegan convention in the stockyards.

Thus has Peter Metcalf, founder of the Black Diamond line of skiing and hiking gear, taken to The Salt Lake Tribune's op-ed page to make the case that the trade shows should move away from Utah, taking their 45,000 annual visitors — spending some $40 million a year — with them.

He has been joined in that view by Yvon Chouinard, founder of outdoor equipper Patagonia, who Wednesday also called for the industry to pack up its camping gear and decamp for another state.

"You'd think politicians in Utah would bend over backward to make us feel welcome," Chouinard wrote. "But instead, Gov. Gary Herbert and his buddies have spent years denigrating our public lands, the backbone of our business, and trying to sell them off to the highest bidder. He's created a hostile environment that puts our industry at risk."

This is much more than a matter of Salt Lake City losing a couple of its larger annual conventions. It is a matter of which star we want to hitch our economic and ethical wagons to. Sustainable tourism? Or boom-and-bust fossil fuels?

Utah leaders should want nothing more than for their state to be the nexus for not only outdoor activities but also for the companies that serve it, not just hotels and guides but designers and manufacturers.

Utah should be to outdoor gear as California is to wine. And we can be, if business and political leaders will together realize that that is our most profitable, most sustainable, future.