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Developing outdoor tourism a great deal for taxpayers.

Article Excerpt
Clearly, the Mississippi Development Authority (MDA) and its tourism division have set their promotional sights on the outdoor recreation tourism industry.

Anytime a market segment has sufficient interest among tourists to spend more than $800 million a year on activities like hunting, fishing and wildlife watching, it is pretty hard to ignore that type of financial investment. More than 1.6 million people that engage in these pursuits in Mississippi every year surely couldn't be wrong.

Outdoor tourism in historical retrospect

I recall when then Gov. Kirk Fordice really set Mississippi's crosshairs on beefing up the state's outdoor recreational tourism efforts. Perhaps only a hunter could recognize the long-range vision of the vast economic potential of the state's tourism engine, then only running on a couple of cylinders at half idle.

Fordice definitely can be credited with the system overhaul and putting all the tourism pistons back into full driving force. Fordice knew this was a virtually untapped resource.

The Musgrove administration also put considerable effort into a...

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