Despite the rollback of federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs and concerns over increased immigration enforcement, Latino families, students and other volunteers showed up to plant trees at Veltus Park in Glenwood Springs on Sept. 13 to kick off Latino Conservation Week.
“Es muy importante venir porque es algo que nos ayuda al medio ambiente también, sembrar estos árboles que nos dan vida,” said Eladia Santiago Del Angel, who attended the tree-planting with her husband and son. (“It's very important to come because it's something that helps the environment too, planting these trees that give us life.”)
The nationwide initiative, which celebrates Latino cultural heritage, aims to make public lands, outdoor recreation and environmental decision-making more inclusive and accessible.
In past years, Wilderness Workshop’s Latino-led environmental advocacy program Defiende Nuestra Tierra — which translates to “Defend Our Land” — partnered with organizations such as the White River National Forest to celebrate the week by offering free bilingual outdoor activities and a large community party that often drew hundreds of people.
But the community party was canceled this year, mainly due to concerns about federal immigration crackdowns. Instead, Defiende Nuestra Tierra partnered with Roaring Fork Outdoor Volunteers, the city of Glenwood Springs and local rafting companies to host two smaller events: the tree-planting at Veltus Park and guided whitewater rafting in Glenwood Canyon.
“We heard from community members that large gatherings where we’re inviting the Latino community to participate, people might not feel safe or worry it could be a target for an immigration raid or something like that,” said Will Roush, executive director at Wilderness Workshop. “By listening to the community, focusing more on connecting with the outdoors, smaller events made more sense, and so that's what we did.”
Amid major staff and funding cuts at the White River National Forest and the Trump administration’s halting of federal DEI efforts, the agency did not participate in this year’s events.
The White River National Forest did not directly respond to questions about its lack of participation in Latino Conservation Week or the wider impact of federal DEI rollbacks. But a spokesperson shared a statement on the agency’s commitment to improving its bilingual communication, which in recent years has included things such as trail signs and prescribed-burn alerts.
“The White River National Forest strives to provide emergency and safety information in both English and Spanish given the high number of people in the adjacent communities who speak Spanish as their primary language,” the statement said. “This is consistent with other emergency communications from county and local agencies in this area.”
Latino residents make up about 30% of the Aspen-to-Parachute region. But only about 3.9% of visitors to the White River National Forest identify as Latino or Hispanic compared with 96.4% of white people, according to 2017 survey results from the Forest Service’s National Visitor Use Monitoring program.
Reconnecting with nature
After introductions and a brief planting demonstration at Veltus Park on Sept. 13, organizers handed out shovels and volunteers got to work.
Del Angel, her husband, Juan Arreola, and son Emmanuel planted native succulents along a small trail that winds down to the Roaring Fork River.
Although the family was sad to learn that the community party had been canceled this year, Arreola was glad they still invited people to plant native vegetation and come together outside.
“Mucha gente no va a lugares por los miedos de que inmigración y todo eso que está pasando,” Arreola said. “Pero nos gustan estos eventos, porque llevemos a los jóvenes, para que se quiten de esas cosas de estar en los teléfonos metidos.” (Many people don't go to places because of fears about immigration and everything that's going on. But we like these events because we can take the young people out, get them away from being glued to their phones.”)
Del Angel grew up planting fruit trees with her parents in Veracruz, Mexico, and wants to share that kind of experience with her son. Even though they don’t have a garden at home, she said they got to bring Emmanuel to participate in his first gardening project in Carbondale with Defiende Nuestra Tierra several years ago.
“Donde estamos viviendo ahorita, no tengo espacio porque pues vivimos en una traila, es chico,” Del Angel said. “Pero cuando él estaba chico, nos orientaron y nos dijeron cómo podíamos enseñarle a él a plantar.” (“Where we're living right now, I don't have space because we live in a trailer, it's small. But when he was little, they guided us and told us how we could teach him to plant.”)
“Él plantó maíz, tomates, calabaza, chícharos, … todo lo que es verduras,” Arreola added. “Fue divertido y fue algo que le enseñamos a él como plantamos una planta y lo que hace la planta para darles a uno de comer.” (“He planted corn, tomatoes, squash, peas … all kinds of vegetables. It was fun, and it was something we taught him, how we plant a plant and what the plant does to give you something to eat.”)
Arreola said getting to participate in outdoor activities such as rafting, fishing and hiking with Defiende Nuestra Tierra over the years has also helped his family get to know local recreation areas better and feel more comfortable accessing public lands on their own.
“Dieron mucha orientación acerca de aquí, de la comunidad,” Arreola said. (“They provided a lot of guidance about this area, about the community.”)
Alejandro Jaquez-Caro, who was hired as Wilderness Workshop’s new Defiende Nuestra Tierra program director in July, said reconnecting Latino families with their ancestral roots to the land is at the heart of the organization’s mission to get more people involved in protecting public lands.
Jaquez-Caro, who grew up in Silt, is the son of immigrant parents from Chihuahua, Mexico. His family has a long history with, and connection to, the land they farmed there, but he said they had to rebuild this relationship when they moved to Colorado.
“Many of us have those connections to lands, and I think that is a shared value for a lot of that community,” Jaquez-Caro said. “You know, as folks have immigrated to Colorado, to any of these areas, it's just reestablishing that connection to maybe a new land, a new geographic area.”
Access to public lands
Although Wilderness Workshop is an independent nonprofit and has not seen a direct impact of federal DEI rollbacks and budget cuts on its own efforts to make public lands more inclusive, Arreola and Del Angel worry about the trickle-down effect of less government support for making public lands inclusive and accessible.
“Deberían nos respetaran eso de lo de las tierras públicas,” Arreola said. “Es muy bonito andar en las montañas, mirando los animales, mirando el campo, todo, los árboles, disfrutando todo desde allá arriba.” (They should respect us when it comes to public lands. It's really nice to walk in the mountains, looking at the animals, looking at the countryside, everything, the trees, enjoying everything from up there.”)
Del Angel said she hopes local efforts by groups such as Defiende Nuestra Tierra to increase the availability of information in Spanish about local trails and keep recreation areas affordable will be able to continue.
“Ahorita hay tierras públicas que ya te cobran por ir,” Del Angel said. “Pues yo pienso que no está bien porque se supone que esas tierras son públicas para la comunidad.” (“Right now, there are public lands that charge you to go there. And I think that's not right because those lands are supposed to be public for the community.”)
Wilderness Workshop and its Defiende Nuestra Tierra program have long been pushing for more inclusivity on public lands, including creating their own bilingual public-lands map and cautioning land-management agencies to consider the impact of implementing permit systems and recreation fees.
“We raised that issue of fees and prices when the Forest Service put in place the permit system for the Maroon-Bells Snowmass Wilderness area, and we've also heard from folks about things like the challenges of getting a fishing license from Colorado Parks and Wildlife,” Roush said. “And so then we've gone on and then passed those concerns on to the agencies.”
Filling the void
When it comes to recent changes at federal land-management agencies, Roush sees the efforts to rollback DEI programs designed to increase public participation as part of a wider effort to fast-track things such as lucrative drilling projects and public-land sales with fewer opportunities for community input.
“There's been a wholesale attempt by the Trump administration to reduce the opportunities for the public to comment through changing the regulations around the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, removing certain projects from public comment, creating these so-called ‘emergencies’ that reduce public comment,” Roush said. “So, across the board, there's a huge effort to reduce the public's voice.”
Although Roush acknowledges their advocacy work may be harder under the current administration, he said Wilderness Workshop is committed to continuing its efforts.
“We're always pushing our federal agencies to take a more ecologically minded stance in their management and to make sure they're as inclusive as possible to our full community,” Roush said. “That void is maybe bigger now that there’s less opportunities to partner with our public-land management agencies to achieve some of these goals, but we're filling that void regardless of who’s in power.”
AJaquez-Caro, the Defiende Nuestra Tierra director, is also committed to continuing the advocacy work.
It remains to be seen, though, whether they’ll bring back their annual Christmas Posada and bilingual tree-cutting celebration this winter, or whether the Forest Service will be able to provide free permits and co-host the event, as it has in past years.
But Jaquez-Caro is planning to organize other free outdoor activities for the Latino community throughout the year such as snowshoeing, which he did for the first time several years ago as a participant in the program.
“We're so lucky to live in this area where we have so many trails, sometimes 10 minutes away from our home, and so I just want to invite more folks into that space,” Jaquez-Caro said. “I want more of our Latino community to have that sense of belonging.”
He also wants to plan more bilingual events where people can write to their elected officials and submit public comments on environmental concerns.
“I want to empower our Latino community to also be sitting at that table, whether it’s writing a comment or talking to elected officials about how they use the land or the impacts they’re currently facing, and talking about how they want to see their public lands being managed,” Jaquez-Caro said.
Wilderness Workshop also planned a free day of rafting to wrap up Latino Conservation Week on Sept. 20.
