The Outdoor Retailer show may leave Utah, but its customers will not.
That’s the message from state legislator Timothy Hawkes. In an op-ed piece in the Salt Lake Tribune, Hawkes says outdoor enthusiasts will “be drawn back again and again to these landscapes that beckon them, raw and wild.” The Tribune reports the twice-yearly trade show’s decision to leave, prompted by disagreement over Utah’s anti-federal-lands stance, will cost the state at least half a billion dollars.