Latino Conservation Week kicks off this weekend with dozens of events in California and almost 300 meetups across the nation. The program started ten years ago with just 16 events, meant to get the Hispanic community outdoors and motivated to protect the environment.
Juan Rosas, conservation program associate with the Hispanic Access Foundation, said hard-working Californians need to enjoy the state's beautiful parks, mountains, desert and beaches.
"In a generation where technology is winning, and everyone's indoors under fluorescent lights, we're seeing depression rise," he said. "There is a lot of healing when we go outside and get some vitamin D from the sun, breathe fresh air, put our toes in the sand, be able to sit under a tree."
The organizers are pressing President Joe Biden to establish a new Chumash National Marine Sanctuary along the central coast, and to expand the San Gabriel National Monument near L.A. and the Berryessa Snow National Monument up north. People can find out more about the festivities on the website LatinoConservationWeek.com.
Rosas added California's heavily Latino inner cities need more local parks where people can unwind.
"When someone lives up in the hills and has a lot of the money, I mean, they can go walk their dog outside, and they're in it," he explained. "But when you're living in the middle of el barrio in East L.A., we definitely need to see more safe, clean, green spaces for our recreation for the public, for mental, spiritual, emotional and physical health."
Next month, the Hispanic Access Foundation will launch an air-quality monitoring program called "El Aire que Respiramos", which means "The air we breathe." It is a collaboration with the Environmental Protection Agency that will place air-monitoring equipment in Los Angeles, La Mirada, San Bernardino and Thermal.
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A federal court judge in Montana blocked a large project which would have logged or clear-cut more than 10,000 acres of old-growth forest and threatened an iconic bird nesting in the Lewis and Clark National Forest.
In addition to logging 16 square miles, the project would have bulldozed 40 miles of new logging roads into the Little Belt Mountains.
Mike Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, said the decision also protects the Northern Goshawk, an old-growth-dependent species which has declined 47% in the last few years. He pointed out the bird has been under constant threat of clear-cut, which Garrity noted allows competitor species to drive it out.
"Even though they're a fairly big bird, they can fly through very tiny openings by pulling their wings in, and they can make very sharp turns," Garrity explained. "If you accidentally come close to a goshawk nest, they are very protective of their nest and they will attack people with their talons and poke out their eyes."
Garrity emphasized the U.S. Forest Service is required by its own rules to tell the public if the goshawk population declines by 10%, and did not. The Forest Service contended the Horsefly project, as it is known, would not affect the goshawk population but its own numbers showed the drastic decline in nesting sites and population.
It is one in a series of lawsuits filed by a coalition of environmental advocates, including the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, to protect species habitat. Garrity stressed the Horsefly ruling is important for the goshawk but the threats do not stop there.
"It's also important for other mature and old growth forest-dependent species, such as pine martin, lynx and forest birds," Garrity outlined. "Which are all in decline."
The court dismissed other parts of the case, including claims roads would interfere with grizzly bear habitat and threaten the elk population.
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Conservation groups are circulating a petition asking the feds to give "America the Beautiful National Parks and Recreation Lands" passes to new citizens at their naturalization ceremony. Members of the group GreenLatinos have met with multiple federal agencies to pitch the idea.
Louis Medina, communications and philanthropy director with the nonprofit Friends of the Inyo, said it would make a great "Welcome to America" gift.
"It would be a great way of giving them the best that America has to offer. It could instill greater patriotism and pride, and it could create new allies in the environmental movement," Medina contended.
The pass normally costs $80 per year and gets one car with up to four adults into all national parks and monuments. Last year, more than 878,000 people became U.S. citizens.
The group also wants to start holding naturalization ceremonies at sites on public lands. And they'd like to reverse the trend of national parks going "cashless," as they have at Yosemite and Death Valley.
Medina added parks may save money by requiring everyone to pay by card, but it risks turning people away who don't have credit cards or mobile payment apps.
"For communities of color and immigrant communities that already are having issues in accessing our national parks, because of costs, because of distance, or because of lack of familiarity, then cashless entry creates yet another barrier," he continued.
The petition currently sports more than 900 signatures and is available on the GreenLatinos website.
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A group of environmental and civil society organizations is fighting for better working conditions for people in countries that supply critical minerals to the United States.
Nickel, cobalt, lithium and other minerals are mined and shipped to the United States for use in manufacturing electric vehicles, long-storage batteries, microchips and solar panels.
Clayton Tucker, climate organizer for the nonprofit Trade Justice Education Fund, said conditions in countries where the minerals are mined do not meet U.S. standards.
"Mining cobalt, there's artisan mines, and child slavery is very, very commonly used," he said. "With nickel, in Indonesia to mine that you basically have to raze entire parts of the jungle and raze basically entire indigenous communities. "
Almost 219,000 electric vehicles are registered in the state of Texas, and the Department of Transportation is working on infrastructure to increase the number of charging stations across the state. Several nonprofits in Texas recently received federal grant funding to install solar panels in low-income neighborhoods, increasing the number of households using the clean energy.
Tucker and representatives from 38 other groups recently testified at a hearing with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, calling for more stringent requirements for future Critical Mineral Agreements between the United States and other countries.
The only CMA that currently exists is between the United States and Japan. The U.S. trade representative has said the agreement strengthens and diversifies critical minerals' supply chains and promotes the adoption of electric vehicle battery technologies. But the environmental groups have said the agreement doesn't go far enough to ensure that workers and the environment are protected and that it sets a concerning precedent.
Tucker said the contracts come with certain perks, and the United States needs to leverage its power "because we need these minerals.
"We're basically trying to make sure that if you receive a subsidy, a tax credit or any form of other support," he said, "that you play by our rules with climate protections, that you play by our rules with labor protections."
The organizations want to be part of future CMA negotiations between the United States and other countries.
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