While Los Angeles is perhaps best known for the glitz of Hollywood, its less glamourous side is surrounded by freeways, home to low-income communities and little green space. In park-poor neighborhoods the chances for kids to safely spend time outside equal those of achieving stardom. Yet, within an hour’s drive of more than 17 million people in Southern California is the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument.
Working with local partners the Sierra Club is working to change the odds by creating new opportunities for communities to connect with nature, and with the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument. Youth and family outings have been planned. Through the national Every Kid in a Park initiative, the Sierra Club has teamed up with the I Have a Dream Foundation and Boyle Heights schools to help more than 40 kids visit the area. For many, the trip was their first taste of outdoor adventure. It was also their first encounter with Smokey the Bear.
“We’re giving them an introduction to a really wonderful experience in the forest,” said Sierra Club Our Wild America organizer Roberto Morales.
Though meeting this icon of the Forest Service may seem commonplace, it’s actually very difficult to arrange. In a sign of the times, the Forest Service has three bear outfits, but only one person to wear the suit. This lack of capacity to do educational outreach is one reason why the Sierra Club’s work extends beyond just planning trips into the outdoors.
What’s also needed to form lasting connections between communities and wild places is a focus on more programming, community outreach, trail maintenance and transportation. In a first-of-its-kind program, the Forest Service recently hired five field rangers whose job was to focus on building community engagement. Most of the field rangers were bi-lingual, Latino, and come from the neighborhoods around Los Angeles. They provided culturally sensitive interpretation and really focused on the low-income areas around L.A. The result was incredibly positive. Another successful pilot program is helping provide public transportation to trail heads within the monument.
It’s time to learn from those programs and incorporate the best practices into the management plan for the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument. The management plan will guide how the monument is used and protected in the future. In order to continue to build community ties to the area, which will benefit both the place and the people who can experience it, the management plan needs to incorporate specifics on how and by when the Forest Service will take important steps to improve access to the monument and people’s experience once they are there. Join us in asking the Forest Service to take this important step in opening the door to the next generation of public land stewards.
“I hope the next John Muir, the next advocate, will be a person of color. Out here in LA this is a great place to cultivate that. What’s happening in the San Gabriels symbolizes what we’re doing here. Providing opportunities,” said Morales.