Modern Land Stewardship requires a Modern Philosophy

In 2020 we are dealing with a reckoning. Covid 19 has laid bare the inequities in every aspect of our society and they are impossible to ignore. This reckoning is happening everywhere and that includes outdoor spaces and nature.

As a land manager of color, this moment has forced me to explore and deconstruct how we, the environmental movement and land management organizations, both protect and provide access to land. By critically examining the traditional practices and philosophies of land ownership and management, a dichotomy emerged for me: the core guiding principle seems to be we can either protect and steward land by limiting access by the public, or we allow access and risk destroying the natural resource as a result. Further complicating this dichotomy is what we mean by “access” and which communities get to enjoy the benefits of nature?

This tension between access and protection is evident in the management decisions made about preserve or trail maintenance, in which programs are the first to be cut during crises, or which language is used to describe management strategies (progressive management prioritizes access, traditional management prioritizes “protection”). This tension is also affected by how land management and preserve stewardship is prioritized when it comes to funding and resources within an organization.

I believe that a new stewardship philosophy is possible, one that does not pit access and protection against each other but rather positions them as tools in a balanced land management toolbox. I want to manage my preserves to be accessed equitably by traditionally excluded demographics and I want to manage my preserves for their ecological health and resource sustainability. To me, and I hope many others, access and protection are not mutually exclusive. In fact, creating equitable access without responsible stewardship is dooming equitable access to fail. 

Before the pandemic hit, we were already facing a lack of equity in participation and access to nature and outdoor spaces. The 2010 National Park Service Visitor Services Project showed non- white users were underrepresented in the National Parks, making up only 5% of visitor numbers. The 2018 Outdoor Industry Association Participation Report found of those surveyed, only 10 % identified as Hispanic, 9% as Black, and 6% as Asian. The people who are most impacted by lack of access to nature right now are also those who have been systematically excluded from outdoor spaces and nature. The pandemic has put a spotlight on this inequity and the urgent need to fix it.

The issues that created these numbers are historic, and systemic. The environmental movement was based on the idea of protecting wilderness and nature by setting land aside and limiting development and use. Without dedicating lands and other spaces for the public good, we likely wouldn’t have open spaces to enjoy, and the original emphasis of protecting wildlands and wildlife saved species and habitats from extinction. Similarly, limiting use as a tool for protection has ecological validity like ensuring the health of preserves by preventing resource extraction and damage to natural resources.

But this system of land protection didn’t benefit everyone. In the United States, white men created our modern concepts of land protection, the outdoors, and “nature”. White male mythological figures like ­­­­­John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry David Thoreau, Bob Marshall and Aldo Leopold went into nature and experienced it as a tool for self-discovery and escaping the toll of everyday life. These men felt so strongly about their experiences that they proposed and championed the idea of land protection. However, they also held decidedly racist ideas. The earliest instances of land protection, the creation of our National Parks system, meant the forceful removal of Indigenous Peoples and First Nations from their lands, and the denial and dismissal of their millennia old land management practices. As the environmental movement grew, this included systemic exclusion of other races, particularly Black Americans, from protected land, and the general disregard for environmental impacts that disproportionately affected Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in America.

As land-owning organizations, we need to have a real conversation about where our preserves are located, how hard they are to get to, and how they are managed. We need to examine how these facts and practices are part of the reason why inequities in access exist. To do that, we must be honest about the history of the environmental movement and how that history influenced our management practices. Only then can we start to bridge the gap in how people of all races and ethnicities are able to access and use outdoor spaces and nature.

If limiting use and access to nature is a guiding principle, then appropriate use must be defined. Often, preserves are managed to maintain the idea of nature as “pristine” and only accommodating the “traditional” user – a solo hiker, usually white, male, and able bodied – in order to limit impact to the natural area. As stewards we continually manage to this idea even when preserves have become community hubs, or when the ecological value of the preserve has been degraded by encroaching development, invasive species, lack of forest regeneration and other threats legal protection alone can’t address. By unquestioningly centering the “traditional” user, we have created spaces that feel unwelcoming to other demographic groups that view and use nature differently. For instance, places to congregate are not common along trails in nature preserves, which fails the users that recreate as family or community units including new users from different cultures. Narrow, “rugged”, trails and the lack of designated stopping or rest areas also fail those with limited mobility or who are differently abled, while encouraging off trail use and the creation of unplanned stopping areas which often lead to compaction and habitat degradation. In many cases, it will still be entirely appropriate to keep preserve infrastructure minimal. Some preserves have sensitive resources and others very low visitation which makes hardened trails inappropriate. Furthermore, there also needs to be a place that caters to those users, regardless of race or gender, that are looking for solitude in nature. But we should not have it be the unexamined default.

 Modern land stewardship must rise to meet modern challenges. It must continue to be the first line of defense against waste disposal, building structures, and removal of natural resources, while also managing how preserves can and should be safely accessed by more than the “traditional” user. This means thinking about how people get to the preserves and what kind of facilities they find when they get there (trails, parking lots, bathrooms, etc.) Management decisions that shift the focus towards more access, removing barriers like transportation or meeting accessibility standards, are often experienced as extra work by many stewards and their managers. For example, in my job description, providing access to our preserves focuses on already existing users, donors, and partners. It has been disappointing to be in rooms where the conversation around mandatory changes towards accessibility are discussed only to try find ways to avoid making changes. 

Along with these infrastructure challenges, many communities don’t know that preserves and resources exist. I have communities 10 minutes away that do not know about our properties. I have been asked by people of color I talk to at supermarkets in town if they must pay to use the preserves I manage. I have school districts that serve low income people of color who cannot afford transportation to attend educational programming at partner preserves. I have urban community groups with engaged constituents who cannot get to my preserves because they do not own cars. In other words, I have communities that do not have equitable access to the protected land I manage.

Unquestionably, more access will take greater and different investment. Importantly we must do this by disrupting the underpinning assumption of who our preserves are for and expanding the definition of our users. By shifting our stewardship philosophy, we can ensure that providing access and the continued protection of natural resources are part and parcel of the same goal. A new vision for our preserves should center the following:

Manage for sustainable, not idealized, use: We must balance access and protection. Preserves are dynamic and to manage them all in a one-size-fits-all approach is a disservice to the land and to people. We must periodically evaluate the amount of use our preserves are getting and adjust management practices accordingly. Let’s use data about preserve usership to actively manage to minimize damage, as we always have. The difference is that by centering more than one user type and need, what “minimizing damage” looks like and the interventions we deploy will be different.

By changing the underlying assumption of who our preserves are for we could in fact become better managers by anticipating and preparing our preserves for a wider variety of needs. Doing so can mitigate the impacts of overuse, and misuse caused by not fully meeting users’ needs.

Embrace a wider idea of what nature and outdoor spaces look like and who they serve: We must acknowledge that different cultures, different ethnic groups, different races, and people with different abilities view and use nature and outdoor spaces differently. We must create spaces that cater to a broader range of expectations. 

Prioritize communities that have been historically excluded and invest in equity of access: We must also acknowledge that our current user demographic is not representative of those who want to access our preserves. We should invest in removing barriers of access both in the physical aspect of the preserve and in the social and cultural aspects of preserve management. It means that managers actively reach out to local communities that have been historically excluded from outdoor spaces. In doing so, we are ensuring that the preserve remain relevant to all future users.

Equitable Access and Accessibility as a form of stewardship: We must remove as many barriers of access to our preserves as possible to create and steward future support for our preserves. This should become part of our written management standards and acknowledged in our job descriptions. Trails should be evaluated both in user load and terrain feasibility to create trail networks that are usable and safe for an expanding demographic. Information at kiosk and trail heads should be accessible and tailored to the appropriate users in the area.

By acknowledging and dismantling the dichotomy between access and protection we can create and set into a practice a more equitable preserve stewardship philosophy. We must examine our practices and rewire our assumptions. Preserves should be managed not for the white male idealized version of outdoor recreation and nature such as hiking on narrow trails with limited supporting infrastructure, but for the lived experience of our current and potential users, regardless of race, ethnicity, abilities or gender. This means a more thoughtful and proactive approach to preserve management. It means understanding current usership, understanding potential use, and what barriers of access are present at each preserve. It also means a financial and cultural commitment on the part of landowning organizations to steward our lands under this philosophy.

The future of our preserves is in the hands of stewards. As we move into a more diverse future, we must start making the changes that prepare our preserves to meet that future head on.

I am a Preserve Stewardship Coordinator for The Nature Conservancy in NY. While I conducted this work in that capacity, opinions are my own.