Public Lands: A Necessity for All, Not a Luxury for Some

This article was written by Kari Blood, Communications & Outreach Manager, and originally published as an Earth Matters column in the Daily Hampshire Gazette on March 14.

Last fall, Kestrel produced a video designed to inspire people to conserve and care for forests and farms in the Pioneer Valley. In sunlit outdoor scenes, we see teen girls laughing together at the Mt. Holyoke summit, a farmer walking his fields and an older woman with her husband enjoying the picturesque Fort River Trail at the Conte Refuge from her wheelchair.

These images resonated with hundreds of our followers on Facebook and Instagram. Yet a question from one supporter struck me: Why doesn’t this video reflect more ethnic diversity? While three young Latina girls are included in the video, happily scrambling on the rocks at the summit of the Mount Holyoke Range, all the other faces are white.

The video shows a variety of ages, genders and physical abilities—a fair snapshot of the people we see most often outside enjoying the land. But that’s the problem. If you were to watch land conservation videos from across the country, you would see a similar picture. The reality is that most land trusts face the same challenge: Their staff, board, members and park visitors tend to be mostly middle- and upper-income and white.

There are complex factors that contribute to this reality, some of which date back hundreds of years to our nation’s founding, from systemic racism and economic injustices to the separation of Native peoples from their land. Even now, diverse communities can face barriers to accessing public land ranging from a lack of transportation options, to not owning outdoor gear, to a cultural fear of wild places. And racism is far from gone. People of color often experience it in their day-to-day lives, including when they are trying to enjoy public spaces.

Land trusts across the nation have recognized that we have a responsibility to rural, suburban and urban communities alike, from all socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds. People from every community have a right to benefit from the forests, farms and waterways being conserved for the sake of local food, health, climate and biodiversity. Land trusts are working to ensure that conserved land is not just a luxury for some, but an accessible necessity for all.

Making this case shouldn’t be difficult: National surveys continually show that people of color are generally more concerned about issues like climate change, water quality, land and wildlife than are white voters.

One of the approaches that land trusts are taking to meet this challenge is called community conservation. The national Land Trust Alliance explains it this way: “[It] starts with people. It begins when the land trust listens to many different voices in its community and then uses its strengths to meet the needs expressed by the community. It connects people to the land and to each other. And while it strengthens the community, the community strengthens the land trust.”

An exciting example of this approach are the emerging partnerships between social service groups and land trusts to achieve common goals. Eagle Eye Institute is a nonprofit, whose mission is to empower urban people, especially youth of color from low-income communities, to play an active role in caring for the environment. Eagle Eye has been partnering with Kestrel Land Trust for the past several years to provide opportunities for teens in Holyoke—who are mostly Puerto Rican—to connect with nature and build confidence and life skills.

“It is hard to capture in words how powerfully our partnership with Eagle Eye has contributed to our school culture,” said Stephen Mahoney, Executive Principal of Holyoke High School. “Bringing students who live in the heart of the Pioneer Valley to outdoor spaces they would likely never encounter … has opened for them a new way of seeing the world. Learning how the land is stewarded by organizations like Kestrel Land Trust has given more urgency and agency to our students’ growing sense of themselves as citizen leaders.”

Big Brothers/Big Sisters, the Literacy Project, and the Care Center in Holyoke have also partnered with Kestrel to bring the benefits of getting out in nature to urban young people facing challenges in their daily lives.

Land trusts are also making connections to more diverse populations through local food and farming. For example, thanks to a creative collaboration of the Pioneer Valley Workers Center, Kestrel Trust and the City of Northampton, a recently conserved field has become the site of a pilot cooperative farm where immigrant families from Central America are growing and selling vegetables for themselves.

As one farm member explained, “On this land we want to grow our own crops for our community. This will be land for us as Latinos, who come from other places. This will also be an opportunity to teach our children to love the Earth. So that they can see how from tiny seeds, something big can grow.” Other land trusts in our region have established similar partnerships, such as the state-wide Trustees leasing conserved farmland to the nonprofit Nuestras Raices in Holyoke.

There are so many more opportunities to bring together people of different communities to conserve, care for and connect to land. The challenges of diversity and inclusion won’t be solved simply by placing non-white faces in videos to “show” a more diverse population. We all must make an authentic effort to learn about the range of perspectives that people from diverse communities have about nature, and create space for their voices and knowledge to be included in the collective effort to protect our environment. The future of the land in the Pioneer Valley and the well-being of our planet depends on it.