How can we ensure a brighter future for our public lands?
We have spent much of the past month reflecting on the role public lands play in our lives. But now is the time to make a plan. Safeguarding our outdoor traditions takes more than one month of celebrating public lands.
The challenges are many: from habitat threats, to transfer of ownership or management, to climate change, to equality in the outdoors, to a building a more inclusive hunting and fishing community. We all can help in many different ways.
Share your ideas – we can all learn from and inspire each other to give back to public lands.
Don’t miss out on these great stories
If you’re like us, you probably spent a good part of September stockpiling as many days in the field as you could before winter. No problems there. Grab a cup of coffee and settle in: Here are interviews and stories you might have missed.
- Over the past month, we’ve hosted interviews with artists, creators and advocates like Apayu Moore, Eeland Stribling, and Sammy Chang, and TU staff have told stories about how they celebrate and honor public lands.
- TU President and CEO Chris Wood shared his views on working together to ensure public lands feel safe and open for all to enjoy, and that celebrating public lands and their importance should include the acknowledgment that many of these lands are the tribal homelands for indigenous people.
- We sat down with author Richard Louv, to talk about nature deficit disorder and the importance of the outdoors to both individuals and society.
- Along the way we explored the issue of access in all forms, including physical, socioeconomic, and racial barriers that prevent people from enjoying the outdoors. Part of this effort includes the launch of a “buy noting” gear swap to help build community and offer a way people new to the outdoors to acquire gear that they might not have the means to afford.
- Check out the #publiclandfail contest where we celebrated and learned from our collective failures to help set realistic expectations for newcomers to the outdoors.
We’ve covered a lot of ground in the past 30 days, and we have a lot of ground to cover in the weeks, month and years ahead, but public lands are the great equalizer and together we can keep our outdoor traditions and lands and waters healthy for generations to come.