Part of our longstanding mission at the NRCA is to open the doors for everyone to be able to access and appreciate nature and the pursuit of conservation. We aim to break the barriers that seclude populations from being able to value and exist freely in the outdoors, such as the Black and Brown community. Many BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Color) scientists, authors, entrepreneurs, farmers, and other steadfast individuals have done incredible work in environmental & outdoor fields and we celebrate their work by showing just some heroes of the great outdoors. We are dedicated to the continual search and uplifting of individuals like these so we can share and celebrate their work with our faculty, staff, participants, and the public. Check out some of the great heroes below!

 

Hiking Heroes 

Evelynn Escobar-Thomas

Evelynn Escobar-Thomas noted a lack of participation of people of color, particularly Black people in the Los Angeles area after moving there. She created Hike Clerb in 2017 to unite womxn of color in the outdoors. Her goals are to make the outdoor space more inclusive and reclaim those spaces with the help of other womxn of color. Hike Clerb’s mission is to heal through nature and promote intersectionality using hiking and being in the outdoors.

 

 

Luz Lituma and Adriana Garcia 

Luz Lituma and Adriana Garcia spearheaded conversations about how outdoor activities like hiking were ‘white people activities’, and how they rarely saw people who looked like them enjoying outdoor spaces. In 2017, Lituma and Garcia started an Instagram page to share their stories. This resonated with other Latinx hikers who also felt ostracized in the outdoors, and they have now created an organization for Latinx hikers all over the country to meetup and enjoy the outdoors together. 

 

Dr. John Francis

Dr. Francis began his work in 1971, when he vowed to stop using motorized vehicles and took a vow of silence for 17 years after witnessing an oil spill in the San Francisco Bay. Dr. Francis earned three degrees and a doctorate in land resources, while he walked across the US and length of South America. He is the founder of Planetwalk, an environmental awareness organization that focuses on the development and coordination of a global network of Planetwalkers. On Earth Day in 1990, he ended his silence, telling that assembled crowd, “Environment is about how we treat each other.”

 

National Park and Land Heroes

Shelton Johnson 

Shelton Johnson has been a National Park Ranger for the last 30 years in parks such as Yellowstone, Great Basin, and Yosemite. Johnson’s passion is connecting people of color with their national parks. He served as an advisor for “The National Parks, America’s Best Idea”, an Emmy Award winning PBS Documentary film by KenBurns, and hosted Oprah Winfrey when she visited Yosemite in 2010. Mr. Johnson won the 2009 Freeman Tilden Award for Interpretation when he worked with Ken Burns, which is the highest National Park Service Award, among other honors. 

 

Mavynee Betsch

In 1975, Mavynee Betsch made it her full-time mission to preserve and protect Florida’s American Beach, her great-grandfather’s investment, from development and destruction. She was famously nicknamed “Beach Lady,” for her lasting efforts and dedication to the beach and its inhabitants. ‘Beach Lady’ gave her life savings, about $750,000, to sixty environmental organizations, ten of which she was a lifetime member.

 

 

Lancelot Jones

Sir Lancelot Jones was the son of “Pahson” Israel Lafayette Jones, who was thought to have been enslaved. Sir Jones grew up to be the defender of his island paradise, Porgy Key, deciding to sell his land to the National Park Service instead of land developers. As a result, we have Biscayne National Park in Florida, the largest marine park of all the parks, and a place where all people are welcome to explore.

 

 

Agricultural Heroes

Jason Brown

Jason Brown chose to walk away from a professional football career in 2012 at the age of 29 to become a farmer in Louisburg, North Carolina. He operates a 1,000 acre farm named First Fruits where he grows produce. He donates his crops to local food pantries, having given away over 46,000 pounds of sweet potatoes and 10,000 pounds of cucumbers. He began this passion by teaching himself about farming using Youtube videos. Jason’s sacrifice is inspirational and demonstrates what giving back can do for a community.

 

Ron Finley 

Ron Finley grew up in South Central Los Angeles, familiar with the lack of fresh produce and healthy food options in the area. He experienced the struggle of accessing fresh food and in 2010, decided to fix this problem. He started planting vegetables in the dirt strip near his home and with this act, started a revolution. The City of Los Angeles owns these dirt strips next to roads when Finley was gardening without a permit. This setback didn’t stop Finley because he fought back hard with petitions, help from environmental activists and the voices of the media. With his organization, the Ron Finley Project, he has transformed the South Central Los Angeles area into a place where the youth can grow up with healthy eating options, education on how to grow their own food, and a transformed community. 

 

Much of the information in this blog post was inspired by Eren K Wilson’s Heroes of the Great Outdoors poster and accompanying biography.

For more trailblazing BIPOC individuals who have made and continue to make necessary contributions to outdoor communities, check out our growing list in this document that the NRCA will periodically update. Want us to add a hero to our list? Send an email to nrca@uconn.edu.

We stand in solidarity with our Black and Brown participants, volunteers, faculty and staff here at the UConn Natural Resources Conservation Academy (NRCA). Enough is enough when it comes to racial inequality, violence and other injustices that have plagued all aspects of our society and communities for far too long. We will not be silent. We are committed to addressing racial inequities, particularly within our fields of focus: the environment, natural resources & conservation sciences, and community education. We regret not doing enough before now to address these injustices within our line of work and promise to integrate racial equity and inclusion efforts into all that we do going forward.

 

We at the NRCA stand with Black and Brown communities and all disenfranchised and oppressed groups that continue to face adversity that affects their everyday lives. Throughout this statement our emphasis is on Black people due to the gravity of the racism they face, but we recognize and acknowledge that these racist issues transcend marginalized groups (Black, Indigenous and People of Color [BIPOC]).

 

Like the larger University, the NRCA abhors discrimination, bigotry, prejudice and acts of racialized violence and does not condone or tolerate acts that desecrate and disrespect any segment of our community. As we long for peace, justice and healing, we mourn for Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Eric Garner, Armadou Diallo, Ahmaud Arbery, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Atatiana Jefferson, Trayvon Martin, Stephon Clark, Alton Sterling, Philandro Castile, Sandra Bland, Jacob Blake and many others.

Racial inequities and injustices have seeped into so many spaces of our everyday lives, even in areas that may otherwise be deemed as “safe.” Those of us who represent the dominant culture in environmental fields have a long history of assuming that the outdoors, greenspaces, or other natural areas are an open safe haven for all. However, as Christian Cooper’s Central Park birding experience in March 2020 has demonstrated, outdoor/greenspaces are not always a “safe haven” for many people of color because they potentially face racial biases, threats and/or violence in these places. We also recognize the role that America’s history of race has had in shaping cultural differences in how we think and feel about our relationship with nature and the environment.

 

Unfortunately, as with so many college campuses, racial issues are present and visible here at UConn. Institutes of higher education must work harder to proactively prevent and address insensitivities, biases, and blatant racial injustices.We at the NRCA are committed to continuing the fight for inclusion, antiracism, and racial equity on our campus, in our greater UConn community, and through our extension work and other opportunities. Below we outline the specific actions we are taking to address racial inequity and inclusion in outdoor/greenspaces as an organization and within the broader environmental field.

 

 

First, we commit ourselves to ongoing self-reflection and acknowledgement to understand our biases and how our actions enable our current racist culture to persist. We understand the immediacy of these issues, and also acknowledge that the battle against systemic racism is a marathon, not a sprint. We commit to the long process of unlearning racist behaviors, thoughts, and actions, and to actively work to be anti-racist in every way. To do this, the NRCA team is participating in equity trainings offered by various groups and taking an active role on Equity and Inclusion committees at the department and college levels and in external environmental organizations.

 

Second, we commit to listening to, and amplifying, the voices of BIPOC members of the communities we serve and beyond. Specifically, we are exploring new ways of celebrating the voices, community efforts and accomplishments of our BIPOC participants by showcasing their work through our social media, facilitating local press that highlights their efforts, and recognizing their efforts through well-deserved awards. We are also working to counter stereotypes of who belongs in science and environmental fields by highlighting BIPOC scientists and leaders through our online platforms. Our team is undergoing training to develop conservation projects with the community, rather than for the community. One of our primary goals is to work alongside BIPOC communities and learn how we can collaborate to expand our capacity to address local environmental issues that have real relevance to the community.

 

Third, we commit to developing culturally-sensitive and responsive environmental action programs. Our initial efforts to accomplish this have included:

 

 

1. Adding program activities that discuss inclusion and equity in outdoor spaces and environmental justice 
2. issues with our students;
3. Encouraging and supporting learners to explore conservation projects that integrate their diverse interests to demonstrate that environmental participation requires unique and diverse skill sets that everyone can contribute to;
4. Carefully revising our program messaging to be as inclusive as possible to the participants and communities we serve.

We also are actively pursuing funding sources to provide paid-opportunities for BIPOC undergraduate students to take on program leadership roles to bring innovative programmatic ideas and serve as near-peer role models to NRCA teen participants. 

 

Fourth, we commit ourselves to being a voice for and with others – not remaining silent. Not only must we hold ourselves accountable, but we must hold the university accountable in creating a more inclusive environment that it promotes and strives to uphold. 

 

As an organization with goals to promote environmental conservation and community well-being, we at UConn NRCA must acknowledge that racism is everywhere, and that it includes the world of conservationists and environmentalists. Our team is committed to continually seeking knowledge, growing, listening, learning, and tackling systemic racism so that outdoor spaces and environmental participation are inclusive of all people, in particular Black and Brown people of all backgrounds. 

 

The ideas expressed here are those of the UConn NRCA faculty and student team. We welcome suggestions and feedback on our evolving views and initiatives to continue to understand how to best address these critical issues in our communities, and to work to ensure that our efforts are anti-racist. Contact nrca@uconn.edu to reach our faculty and student team.