For most of the year, visitors to Zion National Park in southern Utah cannot drive their own cars up Zion Canyon Scenic Drive. Since 2000, when the park…
Read the story: Transit to Trails: How a Bus Ride Changes Who Reaches Public LandIn 2007, Felicia Marcus, then the chief operating officer of the Trust for Public Land, wrote an essay for a Yale collection on diversity and the future of the…
Read the story: Count Who Stays: Retention as the Real Diversity Metric in Environmental WorkIn the late 1930s, appraisers working for the federal Home Owners' Loan Corporation drew color-coded maps of more than 200 American cities. Green meant "best,"…
Read the story: Hotter Blocks, Older Maps: Redlining, Tree Canopy and Urban HeatOpen the cabinet under most kitchen sinks and you'll find the best low-waste product money never had to buy: a stack of washed yogurt and takeout containers.…
Read the story: Low-Waste Living on a Tight Budget: Habits That Save Money and Purchases to SkipAsk for a starter list of American nature writing and you will usually get the same three names. Henry David Thoreau at Walden Pond in the 1840s. John Muir in…
Read the story: Beyond Thoreau and Muir: A Reading List for a Wider OutdoorsThe last freight train ran on Manhattan's elevated West Side line in 1980. For nearly two decades the tracks sat rusting above the streets of Chelsea, until…
Read the story: Green Gentrification: How to Build Parks Without Pricing Out NeighborsHere is a job posting you will recognize if you have ever looked for entry-level conservation work. It is a composite, but every line in it comes from the…
Read the story: The Unpaid Summer: How Experience Requirements Filter Environmental HiringA half-acre community garden on a city corner can be harder to protect than a thousand acres of ridgeline. The ridgeline usually comes with a single owner who…
Read the story: Who Is the Land For? Land Trusts and the Turn Toward Community ConservationIn July 2020, the Center for American Progress and the Hispanic Access Foundation published a report with a plain title: The Nature Gap. Its headline finding…
Read the story: Park Access by ZIP Code: What the Nature Gap Measures, and What It MissesIn September 1982, residents of Warren County, North Carolina, lay down on a country road to stop dump trucks hauling soil laced with PCBs to a new state…
Read the story: Toxic Wastes and Race: How One Report Taught a Movement to Count
