Taking Parks to People
Mobile centers like Roving Ranger and La Ranger Troca have promise to address National Park diversity struggles Earlier this summer in a steamy but shaded corner of Griffith Park in Los Angeles, Jose Garcia has just told a group of third graders that cottontails “eat...
A Not-Always-Rosie Road
Betty Reid Soskin earned fame as “the nation’s oldest park ranger,” but her contributions to America’s national parks run much deeper On a brisk, foggy morning in mid-July, reporters gathered outside the visitor center of Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historic Park, which sits...
Buffalo Soldiers Hwy Enacted!
Breaking (Aug. 25, 2016): The California State Assembly has designated as the Buffalo Soldiers Highway the portion of California State Highway Route 41 from post mile 1.841 at the Mariposa-Madera County line to post mile 4.918 to Yosemite National Park. The act was signed into...
Poll: POC ♡ Outdoors
Since I’ve been writing about race, diversity and inclusion in the outdoors, my inbox and the various comments sections below my stories sometimes read like braying from a Trump rally. “We never hung ‘whites only’ signs at any parks.” “Black people just don’t like bugs...
An Urban Initiative for NPS
Using small-unit nimbleness to attack national parks’ big-picture diversity issue By Glenn Nelson White, male and “midcareer,” Seattle’s Charles Beall in a lot of ways is the face of the National Park Service that turns 100 on Aug. 25. He also may be the best...
System failure
A change in hiring programs cost the NPS a diverse, young ranger You may never have heard of him, but Masyih Ford is arguably the third most-recognizable African-American ranger in the National Park Service. The first and second are, of course, Shelton Johnson at Yosemite,...