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Latino Conservation Week 2026: Where Comunidad Meets Conservation

Por Latino Outdoors

Yo cuento because our stories, our communities, and our connections to the outdoors belong in the future of conservation.

Last month, Latino Outdoors joined communities across the country in celebrating Latino Conservation Week (LCW), an initiative of Hispanic Access Foundation that highlights Latino leadership in conservation and the outdoors. LCW affirms something our comunidades already know: Latinos have long been part of living and caring for the outdoors. The week also creates opportunities for our communities to be heard in decisions affecting the places where we live, gather, and recreate.

Across the Latino Outdoors network, LCW took many forms. In Ventura County, young people explored the Santa Clara River close to home, many for the first time. In the San Francisco Bay Area, comunidad walked among the redwoods at Muir Woods with Spanish-language interpretation and searched for tarantulas at Sunol Wilderness Preserve. On California’s Central Coast, participants visited a habitat restoration site shaped by community members and local students. San Diego brought conservation and cultura together through kayaking, music, and stewardship. Our Austin, Texas, partners gathered for tree planting, environmental education, and ancestral practices. Together, these events showed the many ways recreation, culture, learning, and stewardship can bring people closer to the outdoors.

In Los Angeles, nearly 300 community members gathered for the Latino Conservation Week Community Pachanga: Comunidades, Parks, y Public Lands at Metabolic Studio, an arts and community garden space near Los Angeles State Historic Park and Chinatown. Metabolic Studio, Hispanic Access Foundation, Sierra Club – Angeles Chapter, and the Audubon Center at Debs Park helped lead and organize the gathering alongside Latino Outdoors and partners, including the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), GreenLatinos, California State Parks, TreePeople, LA Compost, Nature for All, and Community Nature Connection. Throughout the Pachanga, partners connected conservation with issues affecting our communities, including extreme heat, access to green space, wildfire resilience, food systems, environmental justice, and safe outdoor spaces.

Latino Outdoors also joined the 30×30 y Nuestra Comunidad: A Conversation for the Future panel, organized with Hispanic Access Foundation and GreenLatinos. Alongside fellow panelists, we explored the CA 30×30 Initiative, California’s effort to conserve 30 percent of its lands and coastal waters by 2030, and what it can mean for environmental justice, equitable access, stewardship, and Latino communities.

Community-centered advocacy needs to remain central and extend beyond Latino Conservation Week, as we consider the long-term impacts that changes to public lands and environmental protections can have on communities already experiencing safety concerns, rising costs, and a nature gap. This is at a time when federal actions and private development interests are putting pressure on public lands, Latino Outdoors is working with community partners to provide spaces to share and learn from one another, with the hopes that we can collectively gather to understand how our unified voice can hold the line, push back, and hold decision makers accountable.

One example is the federal proposal to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, or Roadless Rule. The rule limits certain road construction and timber activities across millions of acres of national forest land, helping protect forests, watersheds, wildlife habitat, and recreation areas. The 2026 proposal affects nearly 45 million acres nationwide, including approximately 4.4 million acres in California. The public process also raised concerns about meaningful participation. The Forest Service initially provided roughly one month for public comment before extending the deadline by 15 days, a timeframe conservation groups argued was insufficient for a proposal of this scale. While the general public comment period closed on October 6, consultation with Tribes is expected to continue as part of the federal government’s legal responsibilities. Public engagement is necessary to ensure communities have the information, time, and opportunity to weigh in on decisions that can shape public lands for generations, including all those that depend on them.

Latino Conservation Week (LCW) shows what this work can look like: with LO’s semillitas discovering a local river, families learning beneath redwoods, neighbors restoring habitat, cultura and música filling outdoor spaces, and community members speaking up for places they value. These experiences reflect Latino Outdoors’ commitment to the organization’s mission, values, and advocacy priorities: equitable access, environmental justice, and a conservation movement that reflects the diversity of our communities

Our stories and our voices matter beyond Latino Conservation Week. Stay informed about public lands, conservation, and opportunities to take action by signing up for Yo Cuento: Advocacy Updates. And because advocacy also begins with telling our own stories, we invite you to share your story with Yo Cuento Blog and help broaden the narrative of who belongs, participates, and leads in the outdoors.

References

Am I Running Out of Time?

por Richard “Flaco” Flores

My doctor looked at me and said: “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go on this trip.”

It was 2023. I had spent months planning the Walker’s Haute Route (WHR), a 130-mile hike from Chamonix to Zermatt through the Swiss Alps. I’d booked the huts, mapped the route, trained for it. And just like that, I had to cancel everything. You can’t plan for when health issues may pop up. It was devastating. And it planted a question in my head that wouldn’t go away: Am I running out of time for the big adventures?

I came to hiking late. I grew up in Los Angeles and the outdoors wasn’t exactly part of the world I grew up in. It wasn’t until I moved to Portland, Oregon that nature became part of my life. And once it did, I was drawn immediately to the mountains. The big views. The hikes that make you feel like you earned something hard. The Tour du Mont Blanc (TMB) in 2021 opened a door and the WHR was waiting on the other side.

It took three years of mental and physical work to get back on track. In 2026, even though it was five years after I had set my sights on the WHR, I felt ready.

My start was amazing. Great weather, good views, and the anticipation and excitement carried me through. On Day 3, I stood at the top of the Fenêtre d’Arpette, a pass I’d skipped on the TMB and had been waiting years to do. The views were endless. I felt elated in a way I had not in a while. This was also one of the hardest passes on the entire route, so my confidence was back on high again.

But then on Day 5, my ankle and foot started acting up. The big pass and the endless views were not totally free. Out of nowhere, mid-morning, a pain I couldn’t ignore. The questions and doubts came back louder: Can I still do this?

But from my experience on the trail, when the body struggles, nature steps in. I pulled energy from the mountains, the wildflowers, the streams, and I pushed. You put your head down. You walk. You learn to listen to your body and also learn when to pull. You rest when you need to. You learn to take the easier path without guilt. You meet others, some even older than you, still out there. Quiet support alongside you, cheering each other on, waiting for you with a cold beer in hand at the hut.

That’s how it goes on the trail. A series of highs and lows. And in this journey, you always come out ahead.

On Day 13, I stopped at a waterfall. It wasn’t the biggest or most dramatic, but it was loud. The kind of loud that fills your chest. The water came all the way down from a glacier above, and I could see the whole thing, from the ice at the top to where it crashed below me. I just stood there. Sunblock and tears. I thought about 2023. The doctor’s appointment. The cancellation. Now here I was, standing next to this roaring waterfall, one day from the finish. I couldn’t believe it.

I walked into Zermatt fourteen days after leaving Chamonix. Exhausted. Proud in a way I rarely let myself feel. It took a day or two to sink in, that I had done the thing I had to cancel three years earlier. That I had answered my own question: “I am stronger than what I give myself credit for”

The WHR taught me to push and pull. When to rest and when to go. When to take the easier path and when to dig deeper. To enjoy the highs, and to learn from the lows. To reset mentally every day, and soak in how lucky I was to be there, to have enjoyed those views, to still be standing.

Because we are stronger than what we give ourselves credit for.

Go. It will be good for you.

¡Vamos!

Richard “Flaco” Flores is a Latino hiker based in Portland, Oregon. He grew up in Los Angeles with no access to the outdoors and discovered hiking as an adult, and eventually as a lifeline. He documents his hikes on YouTube and Instagram at @AndarConElFlaco, creating content for the Latino outdoor community. This summer he completed the Walker’s Haute Route from Chamonix to Zermatt through the Swiss Alps and is always looking forward to the next adventure.

Harvesting Hue

Por Nidia Trejo

I am a Salvadoran-American who grew up in the vibrant city of Los Angeles. As a child, I loved color. I remember going to the L.A. Fashion District with my family to pick out fabrics for sewing projects, and watching my mom spend her evening hours with her rose garden. My life was a blend of textiles and petals, though I didn’t know how they would eventually connect.

When I started college at UC Davis, I had an open mind for science. I began to study the chemistry of colorants—one of my first projects was to dye various natural fabrics with red wines. For years, I felt like I was living in two different worlds. In a science lab as well as in a design studio.

Connecting art and science has been a challenge; both spheres are fueled by creativity, and they often compete in my mind for attention. Recently, I challenged myself to bridge the two worlds.

As a teaching artist at the Richmond Art Center, I created a new class called “Petal Power Art” bringing seasonal flowers into the studio for outdoor engagement. The flowers were provided by the Urban Tilth and the Cloverfield Farms located in the San Francisco East Bay (Richmond and El Sobrante, California). Students extracted pigments, directly, by pounding flowers onto cotton fabric and watercolor paper. We explored the colors from the petals, stem, and any leaves using mini-hammers, rollers, and our fingers.

During this time, my own feelings of stress and exhaustion were a barrier that challenged my access to the outdoors. I typically go on walks with my dog, but the new adventure for me was going into the outdoor spaces of local farms. I pushed through because I believed these “Petal Power Art” sessions would create a sense of calm, progress, and certainty.

It was also inspiring to learn about seasonal flowers. The people at the farms were appreciative of my presence, excited about my purpose and use of the flowers. Standing in the sunshine at the farms, seeing the butterflies, and engaging in Spanish with the people there, I felt a deep sense of belonging—a feeling that this is exactly what I was meant to be doing.

Initially, I worried that the seasonal shift from Fall to Winter would limit the flowers. We started with the bright yellow and orange Marigolds from Urban Tilth in Richmond. I soon realized nature’s inventory was much larger than I thought. During morning walks with my dog, I noticed purples and reds in my own neighborhood—Mexican Sage, Roses, and Hydrangeas.

My visits to Cloverfield Farms in El Sobrante were a lesson for trial and error. In the class we discovered that purple Cosmos and yellow Coreopsis gave brilliant, lasting colors. While some flowers, like Red Amaranth, Agave Zinnia, Anise Hyssop, were trickier to work with because they held more water than expected. These were lessons from nature.

Throughout the class, I connected to my heritage and science background. I pointed out which flowers were native to Mexico, Central America, and South America, connecting students to more places beyond the art studio with the stems in their hands. We talked about the chemistry of the colors — anthocyanins that create deep pinks to purples, as well as the carotenoids and flavonoids for vivid yellows and oranges.

We worked with smaller marigolds as the weeks got chillier, quickly learned to use several parts of the flower, and could extract beautiful color even seven days after a bloom was picked. The artworks from the classes were a blend of organic floral shapes, complimented by embroidery, drawing, and watercolors.

The art studio became a piece of nature, inviting us to take in the scent of the flowers, examine the pollen, and be mindful of any insects we needed to care for during the class. By bringing flowers from farms to the art studio, I showed that the outdoors isn’t a distant destination for both art and science.

Although it may be challenging to bring the art supplies into the outdoors, my future plans are to bring “Petal Power Art” sessions to the local farms and East Bay parks. See my ongoing work at my website, https://www.nidiaktrejo.com/.