Ensuring the outdoors is safe and welcoming to all

There is no room for racism or aggression among those who venture outside for their physical and mental health, which is why the experience of Christian Cooper in New York City’s Central Park was so disheartening. Our shared outdoor spaces must be safe and welcoming to all.

At the Land Trust Alliance, we seek to work with our members to build a land conservation community that understands, values and embraces diversity. When land trusts dive into this work, they build broad and deep support for land conservation and become more reliant on and enriched by the communities they serve. They also address inequities regarding access to land, open space and a healthy environment. As many land trusts have already demonstrated, for them and the Alliance, a real and long-term commitment to this work is the smart and the right thing to do.

This week’s event in Central Park shows how critical it is for the Alliance, land trusts and their staff to model tolerance, practice inclusivity and strive for equity. I am committed to making that a reality, and earlier this month charged a task force of Alliance staff and board members to outline concrete steps that the Alliance can take starting this fall that include:

• Bringing an equity lens to the Alliance’s grant-making (I note that the Alliance made more than $4.2 million in grants to land trusts in 2019);

• Cultivating new partnerships with organizations representing constituencies not traditionally engaged in or served by land conservation;

• Improving Alliance communications with new audiences; and

• Implementing operational changes at the Alliance, such as diversity, equity and inclusion training for our board and staff.

Most important, the task force is charged with identifying specific Alliance programmatic offerings and tools for land trusts to cultivate an inclusive, welcoming organizational culture that respects diversity and that will help them engage people who are broadly representative of the communities they serve.

These priorities were identified through a yearlong intensive listening and learning initiative of the Alliance. Common Ground: Creating a Shared Vision for Conservation created a dynamic exchange of information with a diverse array of individuals and organizations about how conserved land can help communities thrive.

We learned so much through the Common Ground initiative. The incident in Central Park amplifies the urgency and need to incorporate those lessons into our organizational DNA and our day-to-day operations. With the partnership of our land trust community and of the many individuals and organizations we engaged through this initiative, we can model the self-awareness, sensibilities and commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion that will enable all people to feel welcome and safe to enjoy the many benefits of the outdoors.