Last month, 68 organizations signed a letter calling on our elected officials in Colorado to increase funding for the Colorado Outdoor Equity Grant Program (OEGP). I was more than happy to represent one of them.
I supported HB 21-1318 to create the Outdoor Equity Grant Program (OEGP) in Colorado because I know intimately what it feels like to feel unsafe and unwelcome on our public lands. I know what access can mean, especially for BIPOC children, 2TLGBIQA+ children and their families.
This program has created immeasurable good in our state — some of which can be seen in the article “Outdoor equity programs in rural Colorado face unique challenges getting people outside” published in The Colorado Sun — but we’re not meeting community needs with its current funding level.
The grants to date have supported 92 organizations for a total of $5.3 million awarded, and an organization I work for was not one of them. Our proposal for Affinity Group Community Science Trips had to be denied due to the current limitations on funding for the program.
I want to share what funding the Affinity Group Community Science Trips could have meant for BIPOC and 2TLGBIQA+ people in Colorado, hoping that our elected officials will see the need and increase the funding to OEGP.
I wrote a grant proposal for Rocky Mountain Wild, a small but mighty environmental nonprofit based in Denver that partners with larger organizations like Denver Zoo, the U.S. Forest Service, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Colorado Natural Heritage Program, and more to put together and manage community science projects here in Colorado — most notably, the Colorado Pika Project, Colorado Corridors Project and Colorado Bat Watch.
Community science projects have several known benefits to individuals and communities that everyone should be able to experience if they wish to, including an informal pathway to a STEM career (10% of respondents in a study had participated in community science to help further their career). But not everyone feels or is safe to participate in community science projects when the demographics of other participants skew white, cisgender and affluent. This isn’t an unfounded fear. In May 2020, we all saw a white woman leverage her white womanhood against Chris Cooper, who was bird-watching in New York City’s Central Park. Following the incident, many community scientists of color shared similar stories.
The program I proposed was Affinity Groups Community Science Trips. The first tasks of the program, and the ones we asked OEGP to fund, would be to train the trainers — to train BIPOC and 2TLGBIQA+ scientists and outdoor enthusiasts who would like to lead the trips in a “for us, by us” fashion. We also want to contract with a social science organization or facilitator to conduct research as to what members of the BIPOC and 2TLGBIQA+ communities may need to feel safe and what barriers may exist, preventing them from participating in community science (beyond the landscape analysis already conducted through Next 100 Colorado). The end goal of the program would be to provide BIPOC and 2TLGBIQA+ Affinity Group Community Science Trips that would allow marginalized participants to take part in community science in a fun, safer, inclusive and joyful way; connect marginalized participants across similar interests; and do so in a trauma-informed way.
In providing this program, we had hoped to maintain the talented BIPOC and 2TLGBIQA+ scientists and outdoor enthusiasts in the state by providing a source of joy and income and an opportunity for marginalized people to participate in community science. Speaking as someone who is an IPOC and trans, who, despite working for Rocky Mountain Wild since 2015, went on their first community science experience in 2021, I know this is a program that would have gotten me out in the mountains observing signs of American pika a whole lot sooner.
And that’s why I encourage my elected officials to increase the OEGP funding to at least $10 million to match the windfall created by the Colorado Lottery, which helps fund the program. If we truly want to prioritize equity as intended, this is how to do it.
Chris Talbot-Heindl (they/them) is the communications director on the Leadership Team at Rocky Mountain Wild as well as the membership co-chair of Next 100 Colorado, a Colorado-based coalition committed to the establishment of a just and inclusive parks and public lands system.
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