On October 28, Latino environmental leaders, advocates, and community partners gathered at the California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) in Sacramento for Tierra Sagrada, a celebration of generations of Latino leadership in conservation, environmental justice, and outdoor equity. Hosted by Resources Legacy Fund, GreenLatinos, Trust for Public Land, Azul, and Latino Outdoors, in community with CNRA, the event honored past and emerging leaders. During a Fireside Charla, panelists reflected on how experiences with extreme heat, pollution, and limited green spaces shaped their advocacy, reinforcing Latino Outdoors three advocacy priorities: equitable access to parks and public lands, environmental justice, and community leadership in decision-making.
These priorities reflect decades of collaboration among advocates, state agencies, and coalitions. Latino Outdoors has worked alongside CNRA, California State Parks, Parks Now, the California Conservation Equity Partnership (CCEP), and community partners to expand outdoor access. A major milestone came on September 29, 2026, when Governor Gavin Newsom signed the Outdoors for All Act (SB 1268), codifying California’s Outdoors for All initiative at CNRA. As Rue Mapp, Founder and CEO of Outdoor Afro, shared, “So incredible – and a generational benefit of so much hard work!” This achievement reflects years of collective effort to make outdoor access and belonging a lasting state commitment.
California is also advancing these goals through the Outdoor Equity Grants Program (OEP) and Statewide Park Program (SPP), which expand outdoor experiences and parks in underserved communities. OEP’s first funding round connected more than 250,000 youth with nature. Another recent win, Assembly Bill 2734 (Hart), signed on September 20, 2026, established a funding mechanism that directs 20% of specified 49ers Foundation license plate revenues to OEP, subject to legislative appropriation. In the new year, Latino Outdoors will work with leaders and organizational partners to monitor implementation and advocate for these resources to reach their intended purpose. Each victory, large or small, brings us closer to lasting outdoor equity.
With the November 3rd Midterm Elections approaching, Tierra Sagrada highlighted how civic participation shapes decisions affecting parks, public lands, conservation, and community health. California’s progress offers a model for advancing outdoor equity nationwide, but sustaining that progress requires continued engagement. Make your voice heard: learn about the issues, research candidates and ballot measures, and make a plan to vote.
Visit Voto Latino for voter education and participation resources. Beyond Election Day, stay involved in your community and support efforts to make the outdoors a place where everyone can access, enjoy, and belong.
“Please sit,” I asked my mom, then announced: “I am going to live and work in Antarctica.” She couldn’t speak at first. I didn’t blame her.
Her parents—my grandparents—had emigrated from the deserts of Mexico to California’s Central Valley.
My mom worked in the fields alongside them, in miles-long rows, picking fruits and vegetables since she was only eleven. That was her introduction to “the great outdoors.” As a result, she hates being in direct sunlight, often wearing a huge sunhat outside and sometimes shading herself with an umbrella, too.
Here I was, her only daughter, migrating to Antarctica, the world’s largest desert, for seasonal work, a place with 24-hour daylight from October to February. Instead of tomato fields, my fields would be filled with hundreds of miles of glaciers—ice that is, in some places, two miles thick. I wanted to belong to that frozen world.
But when I first arrived in Antarctica, I quickly felt out of place. I had loved being in nature since I was a little girl, but I didn’t feel “outdoorsy” enough in some of the stereotypical ways my co-workers were. I didn’t have technical sunglasses or the fanciest gear. My backpack wasn’t covered in National Parks patches. I hadn’t “bagged” any peaks to speak of. I didn’t know how to ski. I had grown up playing in creeks, climbing trees, riding my bike, and camping—those were the vacations my family could afford.
I knew Antarctica didn’t have an Indigenous human population, but I hadn’t known (and should have guessed) that I was going to a place that has historically been dominated by white people and culture, more so than any other place I’ve lived.
Mostly, it didn’t bother me. As a white-passing mixed-race Xicana, I often blend in. Sometimes in Antarctica, I wished I didn’t. The ugly legacies of colonialism and racism occasionally reared their heads and reminded me why the global majority was mostly absent in Antarctica. Occasionally, I wondered why—in a place so vast and spacious—it felt like there wasn’t room for all of us.
I spent six summers in Antarctica and one winter, where I didn’t see the sun’s yolk for 131 days. Once, when everyone was told to return to our dorms from the buildings we worked in because the weather was so bad, I nearly got lost outside. During the blizzard, one of my co-workers, one of the other rare Latinos on station, got separated from the group he traveled with, and SAR, the search and rescue team, was activated to find him. He survived by sheltering in a nearby building.
The next day at lunch, my co-workers and I dissected management’s outrageous decision to send us into the storm. The man who got lost spoke broken English; his first language was Spanish. One of my friends said, “that’s why we can’t have those people here,” as if his language skills had anything to do with getting lost. My face burned.
Spain, Chile, and Argentina have a long history of engagement with Antarctica—but, like many other nations, it has not always been respectful. Indigenous people have a long history of engagement with Antarctica, too. In 1985, the bones of a twenty-one-year-old Mestiza were found on an Antarctic island. She had died between 1819 and 1825 and was a descendent of both Europeans and the Yagan people of Chile, Earth’s southernmost Indigenous people.
But being there “first,” or having the technology, equipment, and expertise to survive in Antarctica, are not meaningful measures of heritage in or engagement with the outdoors.
I grew up in a small town in Michigan, which was surrounded by corn and soy fields. Once, as my mom and I were driving past a field, I noted a large tree in the middle of neat green rows.
“Why doesn’t the farmer just chop down the tree?” I asked aloud. “That way there is more room for the crops?”
“That tree is for the workers,” my mom said. “So we can have shade.”
It made sense as soon as she said it, and I felt myself blush. Many years later, I know that the tree in the field shouldn’t just be viewed for its usefulness, but as a life to be respected no matter what.
I learned to view Antarctica in the same way: a living place with agency. Part of what helped me change and contextualize what I was experiencing in Antarctica, especially with the sun and the moon, who became like deities to me, were the stories of my ancestors, which I wrote about in my memoir, “The Blue Hours.”
Xkik, the “Blood Woman,” and her desire to eat the fruit she found in Xibalba, the Mayan underworld, helped me understand my own desire to winter in Antarctica. After the sun disappeared for four-and-a-half months, I watched the blackness of outer space fill the sky. The Aztec and Maya stories about how at dusk, the sun turning into a jaguar made sense: the jaguar, as velvety black as my world became, is a fierce and strong animal, qualities I would need to survive.
Antarctica, no matter how far away she seems, is part of what allowed humanity to evolve, and like a lone tree in a vast field, she shades us from the worst of the changing climate.
In a way, we all belong to Antarctica as much as we belong to anywhere on Earth. Antarctica showed me that as earthlings, the outdoors is everyone’s birthright, and that the most meaningful way to be “outdoorsy” has nothing to do with expensive activities or gear. Instead, it has everything to do with respect, reverence, connection, and living in solidarity with other beings, wherever we are.
Stephanie Krzywonos is an essayist and author who spent 886 days of her life living and working at McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Her first book, “The Blue Hours: My Summers and Winter in Antarctica,” is forthcoming from Washington Square Press on December 1, 2025. You can read more of Steph’s writing at stephaniekrzywonos.com.
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 loving 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.
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 forYo Cuento: Advocacy Updates. And because advocacy also begins with telling our own stories, we invite you to share your story with Yo CuentoBlog and help broaden the narrative of who belongs, participates, and leads in the outdoors.
