This time last year, Latino Outdoors joined Tribes, community leaders, and representatives from across the country at the White House – East Wing, to celebrate and protect public lands shaped by grassroots leadership.
It was proof that community voices matter. Proof that land is worth fighting for.
Fast forward to now, across the country, we are witnessing rollbacks, budget cuts, and fear-based rhetoric being dressed up as “policy.” Harm is being normalized in real time, not only through immigration enforcement but also across environmental and public lands decisions.
Jazzari Taylor, LO’s Policy Advocate, in the White House East Wing, January 2025
President Joe Biden and former Secretary Deb Haaland, January 2025
At Latino Outdoors, we see clear parallels between these attacks. The same systems that justify surveillance, detention, and the displacement of communities are the systems that support the sell-off of public lands, the weakening of environmental protections, and the prioritization of profit over people.
This is not a coincidence. It is a strategy. Let’s be clear: people deserve protection just as much as the land does. Our communities are not separate from the outdoors. They are an extension of the land, just as the land is an extension of us. Without each other, there is no “United” States of America.
Protecting the outdoors and public lands without addressing the impacts comunidades face is irresponsible and insensitive.
As an organization, Latino Outdoors envisions a world where our comunidades experience nature as a safe, inclusive, and welcoming space, where we can share and celebrate our stories, foster leadership, and build a vibrant community of people who love and care for the outdoors.
It is not a means to an end to envision such a world, but a continuous moral compass to measure our humility, just as it is to honor Indigenous peoples, elders, and our ancestors. It means protecting land and people together, for future generations. When harm toward communities is justified in the name of “order” or “security,” environmental harm soon follows. When voices are excluded from decision-making, both people and land suffer. Latino Outdoors remains committed to defending access, equality, opportunity to learn on the land, and the many benefits it offers.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, start where you are, within your capacity and capability. Support a local family. Share trusted resources. Volunteer. Donate. Join a Latino Outdoors outing or event. Hold leaders accountable. Defend your neighbors. Defend public lands. Defend the right to live without fear. If you’re ready to take action right now, here is one immediate way to help:
Oppose Steve Pearce’s Nomination as Bureau of Land Management Director; the administration has nominated Steve Pearce to lead the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), an agency responsible for managing 245 million acres of public lands. Pearce has a long record of supporting the sell-off of public lands and weakening land and water protections, and his deep ties to the oil and gas industry raise serious concerns about whose interests would come first. There’s a narrow window to stop this nomination before it advances, so please contact your Senators today and urge them to oppose it.
This moment calls on us to stand firmly in our values, to protect people and land with equal care, to reject fear-based narratives, and to act with intention and responsibility. Together, through collective action and community-centered leadership, we can shape a future where belonging, dignity, and stewardship guide the path forward.
You need to add a widget, row, or prebuilt layout before you’ll see anything here. 🙂
There was an ICE raid half a mile from my house the morning we left for our trip. To call it a raid is a misnomer. A group of masked men in uniforms handcuffed and threw a Latino man walking down the street into an unmarked car. I watched this happen live on Instagram, took a deep breath, and put my kids in the car to drive to the Klamath River.
For me, being a third-generation nature-loving Chicana means straddling the space between city streets and the backcountry. I have the privilege to leave the realities of my city behind and get lost floating downstream. I felt conflicted about leaving, but I had been planning this trip for months.
It took two days to drive from Los Angeles to the Klamath. I was there with my two children, river friends, and friends of friends. The eleven of us traveled in three rafts, roughly 50 river miles. We prepared our rafts to launch at Indian Creek. My boys played in the creek while I rigged my raft, loading it with everything we needed for the next 5 days: drinking water, tents, a stove, sleeping bags, a first aid kit, a cooler, and food. The familiar act of loading dry bags and tying in all our gear set my mind at ease. I was already more relaxed than I had been in months.
I spent my 20s guiding rafts all across the West, chasing whitewater and honing my skills. I worked hard to excel in a sport that was not made for me. At every company I worked for, I was always the only person of color and one of only a handful of women. It was the early 2000s. There was very little diversity in professional outdoor spaces. I learned to code-switch and carved out a place for myself in this community. I made good friends and formed a deep connection to rivers and water. Rivers were the place I felt the most like myself, but racially and culturally the most out of place.
But this trip was not about whitewater. This was a kids’ trip; meant to get my boys (ages 4 and 6) comfortable with long multi-day river trips. I want them to know wild places and to feel connected to nature, to take up space and know they belong.
Just downstream from the put-in, we dropped into the first rapid, a wave train, a series of standing waves. I teed up my boat and pushed on my oars into the waves with my boys and friend sitting in the front of my boat. Waves after wave crashed over them. Silence. “Is this too much for them?” I ask myself. Then squeals of delight, “¡Mamá, otra! ¡Más olas! ¡Somos balseros!” I am relieved. They loved it. My wild boys have grown up in rafts and have already logged more river days than most. They named the rapid olas grandes. Somos balseros.
We made camp a few miles downstream. Everything came out of our boats. We set up tents and the kitchen. My friends made dinner while my children swam in an eddy, a calm spot in the river. By the time dinner was ready, my boys were covered in sand. I bathed them in the river and put on dry clothes. We ate in a circle, sitting in camp chairs, taking in the canyon walls, debriefing the day.
As the sun set, a thunderstorm moved in. My boys are scared of thunder. We ran to hide in our tent. My boys asked me for a story. I told them a story my abuela would tell me when I was little. The one where she sends each child one at a time to pick ceresas, but instead of returning with the fruit, the kids climb the tree to laugh and eat. She sends more and more children to bring back what she needs, and soon there is a party in the tree of children eating and singing “Come. Come. Come.” My boys giggle as I add their names to the story and describe how they climbed the tree, the taste of the fruit, and the sticky juice of the fruit running down their faces. Eventually, they fell asleep.
The days continued with more rapids between meandering stretches of flat water. We camped on a beach each night. The boys caught tadpoles. The adults took turns cooking. The boys collected sticks and skipped rocks. They learned to identify osprey, Canadian geese, and umbrella plants. They took turns rowing the raft through flat water. With no cell phone reception, the outside world faded.
We rounded a bend and spotted a bald eagle perched on a rock. “Aguila calva,” my boys whisper. My oldest learned the Pledge of Allegiance in Kindergarten this year and knows it’s our national bird. He asks me to sing an American song, a patriotic song. We float by, and I sing the closest thing to a patriotic song I can stomach, “This Land is Your Land”, to the eagle and my children as I row. I don’t know if I made the right decision leaving the city while my community is under attack, but these are the experiences I want for my children. This is the type of patriotism I want my boys to know. To know that this land belongs to the birds and them. It is their legacy to protect, steward, and enjoy.
It’s a cool morning, and I feel the sting on my face. I’m there early because I know there’s never enough time to get everything set up. The sun is shining as I walk along Carneros Creek, and a half-dozen different species of songbirds fly tree to tree. I see blue-eyed grass, mugwort, and purple needle grass in between vibrant young oaks. I finish setting up the last station, as I walk back, I spot a big raptor that has its prey in its talons. It had a big round head. Could it have been a great horned owl getting its breakfast? Is it the same owl I’ve seen there for years? I get back to the welcome area, and I hear traffic on the road, but it sounds like the ocean. I feel calm, grateful to be part of this ecosystem of relationships.
Moments later, I am greeted with smiles, high fives, y “como estas, teacher?” 95 semillitas ready to be in relationship with each other, themselves, and this place. We open with a welcome, and I share the theme for the day: seeds. Specifically, how our values are our seeds. I invite everyone to reflect on what value, what seed, they would want to water today. A moment to honor ourselves, our parents, and our ancestors who have passed those seeds down to us. Respect, kindness, and curiosity are some of the seeds that were shouted out. I thank them for sharing, and offer that as we grow, we water them, tend to them, and trim their growth in order for us to become the people we want to be. I see smiles, blank faces, a sign for me to stop talking, and turn it over to the teachers to break up the groups. It’s at this moment that the magic begins.
Thirty 4th graders, six 5th grade mentors, and six college students head down to the creek to learn about beavers and build a beaver den. Students in groups of four gather willow branches, and there is a friendly competition to see who can gather the most. A couple of hundred yards away, another class is designing a future pond that will be part of the Outdoor Classroom. The group sits quietly, some have their eyes closed. A student points out that they hear quail up the hill. The whole class then gathers under a beautiful oak tree where 5th graders hold a big poster illustrating their vision of the future pond, adding different species of plants and animals they want to see. Students draw birds, plants, frogs and salamanders, deer, and there are kids sitting on a bench under a tree, fishing.
It was beautiful to see a collective vision of what the future could look like, a future they’re helping build together. Another hundred yards away, the last class is collecting seeds of native rushes that will be used for a future pond restoration project. As kids are collecting seeds, a student shares with her college mentor that she knows how to collect seeds because her abuelita saves seeds to grow food every year in her garden. THIS IS WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT.
The Outdoor Classroom program focuses on relationships in nature so that “magical moments”, or moments of joy in relationship, can happen naturally. These magical moments are alive, they are co-created, and even nurtured. When a child brings the story of who they are, their seed, we as educators, acknowledge the gift that story is and connect the different layers of relationships that are present in that moment. These moments honor ourselves, our memories, who we are in that very moment, and who we hope to be in the future.
For an outing like this to happen, three elementary school teachers, one college professor, 25 college students, and two land trust staff members collaborate in the planning, delivery, and evaluation of the programming. There is much willingness to work on this project together, to share ownership, because getting kids on the land to be in community is the right thing to do. I am so fortunate to have a partnership with CSU Monterey Bay’s Environmental Studies Professor Dr. Victoria Derr and her students, who are willing to engage in this placemaking project with us at the Elkhorn Slough Foundation and Hall District Elementary School. Tending to this relationship has deepened the impact this collaboration has had on the community. We reflect constantly on the work we are doing, but we also dream of the spaces we want to create in the future together.
This dream brought another partner to this project, Adelante, a group of artists and community-based researchers from Arvin, CA. Together, we came up with Water Stories, a project that builds elementary and university students’ connections with the water of Elkhorn Slough. We do that through natural dyes as a culturally relevant method of understanding water quality of the slough and its impact on the environment. It also includes a facilitated oral history project in which students interview their family members about their relationships to water, their ‘water stories.’
At the same time, we are creating a multitude of in-person experiences for the youth and families to experience the slough in community. This is where Semillitas Outdoors comes in. This event was co-hosted by Latino Outdoors Central Coast, Elkhorn Slough Foundation, CSU Monterey Bay Environmental Studies Department, and the women of Adelante. It was a celebration of the work we are all doing together, thanks to the California Coastal Commission’s Whale Tail Grant.
The event was a community-oriented gathering that brought intergenerational families together. It was a day to celebrate all the work this partnership has been co-creating and honoring the families we serve through different art exhibits and activities. Serving over 90 participants throughout the day, we were welcomed by danzantes from Kalpulli Ehecacoatl who shared a danza that honors children, the land, and water.
The CSUMB students celebrated their work with an immersive exhibit showcasing biocultural memories and joy in nature that included: a dyeing with home foods activity that highlighted the water quality story of the Elkhorn Slough through their water monitoring work, two-hands on interpretive plant and animal exhibits that had families learning about the different native species that call the Carneros Creek Outdoor Classroom home, and finally the indigo dyeing workshop where families shared their water story.
Having the elders from Adelante share about their water justice work with families present was a celebration in itself. Participants moved through the different activities at their own pace, adding their own story to the different exhibits, honoring memories, and creating new ones together. Semillitas in our program visit the Outdoor Classroom up to 15 times a school year. They are actively shaping the future of the program with their stories, they are stewarding the land, sowing seeds for their future relationship with the land. Our goal has been to connect semillitas to each other, themselves, and this place. The way we do it flows with the story, and recognizes that joy in relationships is how we can get there. This work is possible because our partners and familias are willing to build something together. It’s been my greatest honor to walk with you, listen to pajaritos, and tend to our semillitas together.
I didn’t grow up kayaking, birding, or even botanizing our local trails. I grew up with burritos paseados de mi apa, platicas en familia, friends and family coming over for a plato of my mom’s birria, listening to my dad share one of his charritas. I grew up inventing games outside, sliding down hills on cardboard boxes, and going out to the garden to pick medicina whenever I needed it. Today, more than ever, I am grateful for the comunidad that Latino Outdoors is. It has given me a place to belong to, to share stories with, to build community with familias the way my parents have taught me. To serve people, with people, con amor y comunidad.
Juan Ramirez was born and raised in Salinas, CA. Juan grew up visiting la familia en Mexico every winter break where he has fond memories of being connected to land and people. Whether he was helping herd farm animals on his donkey or being in the potrero with his family, he was always aware of the gifts the land gave him and his family. His parents’ experience being farmworkers shaped the kind of relationship he wanted to have with the land. He found the redwood forest being that place that gave him the embrace he needed. Since then, Juan and his family visit the redwoods as a place to connect with each other and the land. Juan stayed local and attended California State University Monterey Bay where his work with service learning led him to education. Now, Juan is the Outreach Coordinator for the Elkhorn Slough Foundation where he is bringing programming that focuses on creating healing relationships with nature and all program participants.
Volunteering as a program coordinator on California’s central coast, Juan will share LO’s different offerings with local families and help the LO Central Coast team with logistics. Juan hopes to collaborate with others and create more access for families in the outdoors.
