Why We Need More Latinos to Hit the Trails
State and National Parks Won’t Survive Unless a Diverse Cross Section of Americans Steps Up to Protect Them
During my more than 30-year career as a California state park ranger, I was known as the diversity guy because I was one of the few Latinos to wear the park ranger uniform.
Similar diversity deficits exist across most of our park systems. For example, the National Park Service workforce is only 5 percent Latino, a paltry representation. And that lack of diversity among rangers is, unfortunately, matched by a lack of diversity among the people who visit the park.
While we often think about parks as places for preservation—and they are—I …
