Parks Stewardship Forum

In this "Letter from Woodstock," our columnist highlights a few short videos that address human dignity and human rights in America’s national park system.

By storing carbon in vegetation and soils, ecosystems naturally prevent emissions that cause climate change. Protected areas effectively conserve forests and carbon. Halting deforestation would cut 10% of global carbon emissions.

A brief introduction to the theme articles on LGBTQIA+ Experiences and Expertise in the Outdoors and in Conservation.

One of three Tarot illustrations that serve as frontispieces to sections of the theme papers on LGBTQIA+ Experiences and Expertise in the Outdoors and in Conservation. Each illustration represents an aspect of the character of the LGBTQIA+ community.

An account of the author's experience as a queer person working in conservation in Iowa.

The author describes her joys and vulnerabilities as part of a lesbian couple experiencing two of their favorites places in nature.

A portfolio of photographs of places in and around Chicago taken during nature outings of LGBTQIA+ people.

An overseas trip provides adventure, self-discovery, and a measure of healing to the author.

The outdoor recreation industry is heavily influenced by a dominant, heteronormative culture—a culture that defines the experience not only for the participants but also the people working within the industry (Warren 2015; Holland, Powell, Thomsen, and Monz 2018). Those interested in advancing a career as a professional in the outdoor recreation industry, particularly related to outdoor leadership and adventure guiding, are often required to engage in a variety of unique living situations, arrangements, and contexts. This may include, for example, moving to rural and remote communities that sit adjacent to wildlands where many outdoor recreation organizations operate their programs. It may also require extended overnight trips with shared housing and rooming arrangements that require a level of intimacy with people they work with that is uncommon to most employment settings. Unique to this field, then, is how entangled personal identities are in the professional settings where one works with colleagues and serves their participants, a phenomenon that creates distinctive challenges to individuals who have non-dominant identities. This case study follows the career of a transmasculine outdoor recreation professional, Zach, as their career in the outdoor industry traverses multiple sectors (ski patrol to wilderness therapy) and geographic locations in North America (New Mexico to Alaska). Two semi-structured interviews were conducted with Zach, along with a photo elicitation exercise where he/they shared photographs that communicated a deeper meaning of his/their lived experience. In the sections below, you will learn about the experiences that Zach had through his/their career within the outdoor recreation industry and how his/their queer identity shaped his/their professional and personal experience in these spaces.

The essay tells the story of a gay man, working as a National Park Service ranger, coming out to himself and in his workplace. This personal story parallels the national reckoning with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Asexual + issues ,including the assassination of the first openly gay elected official in San Francisco and the unfolding crisis of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The story tells how secrets can impact employee confidence and careers. It also shows how seemingly benign actions by colleagues and supervisors can have both positive and negative effects on the personal coming out process. It also suggests how supportive actions and the workplace environment can strengthen both the individual and the agency.

One of three Tarot illustrations that serve as frontispieces to sections of the theme papers on LGBTQIA+ Experiences and Expertise in the Outdoors and in Conservation. Each illustration represents an aspect of the character of the LGBTQIA+ community.

A collaboration between Zion National Park and Stonewall National Monument produces two social media posts that give examples of queer ecology.

Drawing on the case of parks and marginal spaces in Chicago, considered as novel ecosystems, this essay works to unpack some of the costs and limitations of how conservation value has been defined by conservationists. Namely, conservation value tends to center pristine, historical ecosystems like tallgrass prairie over the small pockets where many native species continue to survive and form new ecological relationships. By engaging queer and trans theories and thinkers who argue that fixation on the past can limit evaluations of the present, I argue for a wider vision of conservation value that is more open to creative possibilities for survival into the future.

This article provides two different perspectives on the designation of Stonewall National Monument. which was proclaimed by President Obama in 2016. First, former National Park Service (NPS) Director Jonathan Jarvis shares his experiences leading up to and beyond the designation. In the second section, Megan Springate places Stonewall into the larger context of the NPS Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ+) heritage initiative and the preparation of LGBTQ America, the LGBTQ+ theme study, which is a document commissioned by the National Park Foundation for the National Park Service.

This essay looks at Elizabeth Weinberg’s book Unsettling: Surviving Extinction Together through the lenses of interconnectedness between communities, understanding of the role of queerness in the fight against climate change, and the importance of understanding just how connected everything on this planet is to everything else. Through personal reflection, photos, consideration of current events, and shared memories, the writer looks at Weinberg’s work as a call to a better future with the hope of prevailing against problems of white supremacy, climate change, and human turmoil through the lessons being taught by the youth.

Place matters. It connects people to nature, ancestry and culture, history, and complex emotions that are much harder to name. Place fosters a sense of identity and a sense of belonging. As interpreters, we have a habit of prescribing meaning to place, and after some time, we take that meaning as the only meaning that a place has. We share it with visitors at parks, museums, or other heritage sites, and hope that they garner as much thrill from the place we love as we do. But a place’s meaning is not set in stone, nor is it singular. Interpreters can present multiple perspectives, but there will always be other perspectives that they do not know; after all, an interpreter is just one person. The perspectives and meanings of place are complicated, and the narratives that have dominated the field of interpretation, especially in the United States, have been framed by a colonial past, which persists in our present. Centering narratives from the margins, or narratives from groups of people traditionally marginalized, requires intentionality, humility, a willingness to take ownership of mistakes, and dedication to destabilizing colonial frameworks. In this article, several tools for successfully centering narratives from the margins will be explored, as well as a case study of efforts at national parks to begin accomplishing this ongoing work.

One of three Tarot illustrations that serve as frontispieces to sections of the theme papers on LGBTQIA+ Experiences and Expertise in the Outdoors and in Conservation. Each illustration represents an aspect of the character of the LGBTQIA+ community.

A introduction and link to a short video on the queer meetup group Out In Nature.

A re-envisioning of our understanding of wilderness, informed by a queer understanding of our place in it, can offer new ways of looking at the climate crisis. A deeper relationship with wilderness offers us new pathways of understanding and connection. For queer people this relationship can offer a healing salve for the historical abuses inflicted upon us by societal structures and can promote a sense of purpose and connection in our existence here as a part of this environment.

Recently, the field of research exploring the links between neurodivergence and the LGBTQ+ community has grown. Many queer adults who were not diagnosed as children are just now receiving neurodivergent diagnoses. Nick Walker coined the term “neuroqueer” in 2015 to describe the intersection of being both neurodivergent and queer. “Neuroqueering” refers to the embodying and expressing of one’s neurodivergence in ways that also queer one’s performance of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and/or other aspects of one’s identity (Walker 2021). Considering the increase of queer representation in the outdoors, it is necessary to also address neuroqueering and its implications for the outdoor community. This conceptual article will address the connection between neurodivergence and the LGBTQ+ community, implications for the queer outdoors, and ways to include neuroqueer recreationalists and outdoor advocates in efforts to make the outdoors more equitable.

This narrative highlights our personal experiences of being in queer and fat bodies accessing (or trying to access) outdoor spaces. We present a brief overview of literature that lays the foundation and helps situate this work’s contribution to understanding the in/accessibility of outdoor recreation and parks. Our narratives present personal stories of mapping our (fat) bodies and our queerness relative to the outdoors and to the systems of power that govern the so-called wilderness and wild spaces we have encountered. We conclude with a series of recommendations for institutions, individuals, and groups who are interested in more queer and fat inclusion in parks and recreation spaces.

This essay explores a cohort of eco-activists within the queer and trans community who specifically link social justice concerns with environmental activism. Areas of focus include climate crisis, activist eco-interventions, the development of social media platforms as eco-activist hotspots, and sites (places) of public protest. An intersectional environmentalist framework is applied throughout this paper, highlighting insights and strategies by queer and trans eco-activists of color.

From 1861 to 1904, Miss Harriet Colfax served as keeper of the federal lighthouse at Michigan City, Indiana. For the full 43 years of her service her companion, Miss Ann Hartwell, lived with her. While original source documents are a record of the lives of “Ann and Tat,” as they were known to their friends, newspaper articles published during their lives and in the decades after their passing (both in 1905) provide insights on the ways they were seen and their relationship described. A difference is noted after their deaths, with an apparent distancing of Ann from Harriet. Through reporting and analysis of news articles details, are revealed about Harriet Colfax and her relationship with Ann Hartwell. A sort of disappearing of that relationship in the news, and an official distancing by the historical society now managing the lighthouse as a museum, are described. While there is no specific evidence that Ann and Tat were lesbians, there is similarly no evidence that they were not. This leads to an exploration of a lens of queer possibility and thoughts on interpreting LGBTQIA+ stories at parks, protected areas, and heritage sites.

An excerpt from the newly published, first-ever biography of the American conservationist George Meléndez Wright.

An excerpt from the concluding chapter of the 4th edition of this standard textbook.

This visual essay in "The Photographer's Frame" describes the restoration of oak and pine forests on an island in Channel Islands National Park, California.

A poem in the "Verse in Place" section of Parks Stewardship Forum.