Happy Hump Day, Shit Givers.
People who live near parks and trees have lower rates of depression and anxiety, recover from illness faster, and even show measurably lower blood pressure.
Kids who grow up with regular access to nature do better cognitively and emotionally.
Neighborhoods with more tree cover run cooler during heat waves and have cleaner air to breathe.
But as per usual, access to all of this is wildly uneven: wealthier, whiter neighborhoods are far more likely to have a park nearby than lower-income communities and communities of color.
So, this week is all about parks, public lands, and who gets to enjoy them by funding the ones we have, protecting the wild spaces behind them, and getting more people (especially kids) outside.
Let’s go.
— Willow
APL Positions covered this week:
🌳 Park within 10-minute walk for all Americans (learn more)
🏞 Public lands accessible by transit (learn more)
👉 NEW: Go deeper on all of our APL Positions here.
Fund the parks
A lot of the most-used parks in the country are also the most underfunded, understaffed, and falling apart.
Here’s what you can do:
Protect public lands
We need parks you can walk to, and we need wild public land further out, which is permanently one bad administration away from being sold off, drilled, or developed.
Here’s what you can do:
Protect public lands and wild places with The Wilderness Society (go).
Protect the outdoors so future generations can enjoy them with the Outdoor Alliance (go).
Support women-led efforts to protect public lands and wilderness with Great Old Broads for Wilderness (go).
Help sustain the landscapes and history of our national parks with the National Park Foundation (go).
Get kids outside
Access to nature isn’t just adults in hiking boots. Kids who grow up without a backyard also deserve access to the outdoors.
Here’s what you can do:
Empower underserved youth through nature and outdoor science education with Environmental Learning for Kids (go).
Help city kids unlock purpose and resilience through the outdoors with the City Kids Wilderness Project (go).
Inspire kids to protect nature through outdoor learning and action with the Cottonwood Institute (go).
Let’s get specific
Some of the best park and conservation work happens hyper-locally: one trail, one river, one watershed at a time.
Here’s what you can do:
Protect Canadian lands from sea to shining sea with CPAWS (go).
Protect nature and biodiversity along Ontario’s Bruce Trail corridor with the Bruce Trail Conservancy (go).
Protect the Potomac and fight for clean water in your community with Potomac Conservancy (go).
Join the worldwide pocket forest movement with SUGi (go).
That’s it for this week.
Thank you — as always — for giving a shit.
— Willow
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