<\/p>\n
Two years ago, when the Trump administration announced its plans to shrink the newly formed boundaries of Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah, the outdoor recreation industry sprang into action. Lawsuits were filed, op-eds were penned, and the homepage of Patagonia\u2019s website went black, with this message scrawled across its homepage: \u201cThe President Stole Your Land.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, at the U.S.-Mexico border, another battle is brewing. In February, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency there, meaning that typical environmental and cultural review were waived on more than 500 acres of public land now slated for border wall construction.<\/p>\n
As a result, in places like Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, saguaros are being ripped from the ground, and tribal nations will lose access to land sacred to them. Once it is built, the wall will sever wildlife habitat between the U.S. and Mexico. Conservationists and activists at the border are tirelessly documenting every development.<\/p>\n
But lately, they\u2019ve begun asking themselves: \u201cWhere is everyone else?\u201d<\/p>\n
When it comes to the Borderlands, the fight for public lands looks much different. The land isn\u2019t considered a recreation mecca, and so far, it hasn\u2019t been the focus of prominent campaigns by the outdoor recreation industry. As a result, the public lands that hug the southern border don\u2019t reap the benefits of the debate\u2019s most powerful voice: Big Rec. When the recreation industry focuses attention on places like Bears Ears, those landscapes steer the narrative \u2013 and influence which public lands are worth fighting for.<\/p>\n
Border residents who have deep ties to the landscape and its wildlife \u2013 but lack the money to buy products from companies like Patagonia, for example \u2013 are losing out on that sort of advocacy currency. Access to the outdoors can be expensive. Transportation costs and the increasing price of park passes and outdoor gear make some forms of recreating out of reach for disadvantaged communities. At places like REI, where public-lands advocacy is \u201cvery much member-driven, and driven by interests in and around where we do business,\u201d according to Marc Berejka, REI\u2019s director of community and government affairs, that means that certain communities don\u2019t receive as much attention. \u201cWe\u2019ve not heard the same amount of outcry for engagement for purposes of creating or sustaining recreational opportunities\u201d when it comes to places like Organ Pipe, Berejka said.<\/p>\n
Patagonia operates using similar indicators. \u201cWe\u2019ve always taken a grassroots approach to having support in these areas where these things are happening,\u201d said Meghan Sural Wolf, Patagonia\u2019s environmental activism manager, noting that Patagonia\u2019s usual channels hadn\u2019t seen any calls to action recently. Advocacy is not driven only by consumers, she said, but they do play a big role.<\/p>\n
In other words, the outdoor industry relies on an established network to spur advocacy. When its customers are silent about lands at the border, the industry won\u2019t speak up for those landscapes, either.<\/p>\n
Outdoor rec\u2019s consumers are a reflection of the industry itself, and that is problematic for a community that has a longstanding problem with diversity, as Ava Holliday \u2013 a founding partner of the Avarna Group, a leader in developing inclusion and equity within the industry \u2013 told Outside magazine last year. This inclusion problem extends to outreach and advertising, too. As a result, the industry has been seen as a homogenously white industry that has failed to market to, or represent, a more diverse group of people. That is changing, though. In early 2019, REI signed on to an outdoor equity fund in New Mexico to expand access to the outdoors to under-represented communities. The company has also made diversity a priority in its hiring process. Still, advocates say that progress is slow.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, the border\u2019s public lands are on a tight deadline. Take Hidalgo County, in New Mexico, for example, which is 58% Hispanic. Over 200 acres of land there and in neighboring Luna County have been ceded to the federal government for border wall construction. Nearly 30% of the population lives below the poverty line.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the last resources they have is this amazing Chihuahuan Desert landscape,\u201d said Angel Pe\u00f1a, the president of the Nuestra Tierra Conservation Project, a nonprofit. Pe\u00f1a has been working to drum up more support for New Mexico\u2019s Bootheel, a southern chunk of the state that juts into Mexico. Hunting and fishing are popular in the area. \u201cI\u2019m curious if those outdoor retailers don\u2019t see themselves on the ground,\u201d Pe\u00f1a said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I\u2019m curious if that doesn\u2019t go both ways. I wonder if the people at the Borderlands don\u2019t look to the Patagonias for help, and that\u2019s why the outdoor rec industry doesn\u2019t feel close to that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jos\u00e9 Gonz\u00e1lez, founder of Latino Outdoors, says he understands that recreation companies have to focus their efforts where the money is. Still, he thinks engaging with more diverse communities near the border could help that goal. \u201cAt the end of the day, it is still about dollars and selling product. But all of those things are not exclusive,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is a missed opportunity to know that border communities can be just like any other communities in relation to public lands.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several tribes, including the Tohono O\u2019odham, call the Borderlands home. But while tribal nations saw a swell of protests and had allies at Bears Ears, the Tohono O\u2019odham Nation has received no industry support. The U.S.-Mexico border divides the tribe\u2019s territory, and now the community is poised to lose access to places like Organ Pipe\u2019s Quitobaquito Springs, where the tribe conducts an annual salt pilgrimage. \u201cIt would cause a sacred journey to cease on its traditional route that has been (going on) for many, many years,\u201d Verlon Jose, governor of the Traditional O\u2019odham Leaders, told reporters in July. And, in September, The Washington Post obtained a National Park Service report that stated that 22 archaeological sites would be endangered by wall construction, including burial sites.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is kind of shocking. People have this idea that there is a huge resistance movement (at the border), and in reality it is just a few people,\u201d said Laiken Jordahl a Borderlands campaigner for the Center for Biological Diversity. \u201cYou look at all of the outpouring of support for Bears Ears, and Patagonia is involved and REI is stepping up. It is so different when it comes to the Borderlands.\u201d<\/p>\n
This article was first published on hcn.org.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" won\u2019t they stand up for the Borderlands?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":64433,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-64432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64432"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=64432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}