Roundtable 4, Tuesday afternoon: Taking Citizen Stewardship to the Next Level: Next Steps in Expanding this Movement

Facilitator: Wendy Newman

Participants:
Connie Myers: Executive Director, Carhart National Wilderness Training Center
Robert Searns: Chair, American Trails Board; Founding Associate, GreenWay Team, Inc.
Beth Conover: Consultant, Author; formerly Director of GreenPrint Denver
Mike King: Director, Colorado Department of Natural Resources
Ann Baker Easley: Executive Director, Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado

WN: Let’s get down to the basics. What are those logical next steps that we need to focus on in order to create a powerful movement? What are one or two of those logical next steps?

-Clarify and build a mission. We need to articulate in simple, effective, credible, concrete, and unemotional ways the economic and social benefits of the places we’re trying to protect. Give people a reason to get outside and go do this stuff. Create a brand/message that sticks.
-Connect to a sense of urgency. Identify a compelling need, mobilize the resources, create a mandate, coming from ideally as high as possible. Concerning policy and finance.
-From perspective of land management agencies, we have several things going in our favor. And a lot of hurdles. State of CO is in state of fiscal crisis.
- People feel passionately about natural resources. We need to make sure we’ve identified projects that create a sense and source of pride.
-Plenty of people here ready to go to the next level. If we make this higher profile and partner we have the capacity and capability to do that.
-Check egos and logos at the door and really have a set of committed folks to sit down as equal partners and take next steps to incrementally make this happen. What would it really take to build that capacity.
- How do we get every user to be a steward? Not only the ppl who go out and volunteer, but the people who camp, hunt, fish, use the facilities.

WN: We’ve been talking about missing parties here and how do we work with obvious partners who may not think they’re partners. I think the next step is to engage the health community, transportation, outdoor rec, environmental educators, etc. How do we take this need for integration and actually do it?

-Integration is not something government does well. Concerning DNR, there are tons of disconnects that create themselves over 100 years of state gov’t. Before integrating outside DNR needs to go back and create some centralized clearinghouse within DNR first. We can dream big.
-Even with all the challenges, what are the best ways to reach community? What do we have and what do you have. There’s the Colorado Kids Outdoors initiative which will be critical to Hickenlooper’s admin. Confident we’ll get this moving in the next two months and the admin will take it forward.
-Does it make sense within stewardship movement to maybe just tackle one sector. Maybe just focus on the backlog within state parks for example to have concrete needs/results?
- Move people from self-interest to mutual interest (same with orgs. True collaboration comes with understanding where individual organizations’ interests align). Individual parties have to get act together, have a shared vision.
- Need to have some kind of a leadership structure if you truly want to collaborate. Need to coalesce around a common set of ideas.
- There are always reasons that it’s hard to work together, but you only get the funding if you come together
- The Crisis issue: The fiscal crisis and the politics of scapegoating. It is really easy to hit on objectives that are perceived as weak. Sadly there are those that will make us the scapegoat.
-We’re going through a generational shift—there’s a lot of gray hair in the natural resources field. Are we going to be able to engage the next generation to engage in this fight with the same zeal?
-The general economy. We need some very radical changes in our economy and that isn’t going to happen overnight. We’re in for the fight of our lives in the next 10-20 years. We need to build on that and find ways to engage people. Will probably have to rely more on philanthropic sectors.

WN: How do we really truly collaborate? How do we create a mechanism for doing that when quite honestly we don’t even often agree and it’s a white elephant in the room that there is a lot of conflict even among entities here today.

-It comes back to the power of a shared vision. Agencies and organizations don’t like to play together because they like to shine on their own. It’s not as easy to talk about there being too many of us, someone has to get cut. It’s easier to say, at the end of the day, what really matters? What is it really about?
-Each organization can do a certain piece of larger vision. Partnerships are about relations and relationships are investments of time and emotion. It takes a while to build trust.

WN: We know this is great beginning but we need to understand the level of commitment it will take to move this forward

-It is going back with specific nuggets from this and turning them into action. Take the salient things we’ve heard and do something with them.
-example of VOC: the board is continually looking at what we do. Raising money. VOC has had a 16% cut in the last 2 years. The realities of what the organization is trying to do in this movement are austere and in our face.
-It is critical to engage all aspects of leadership (Staff, volunteer leaders, Board members)
- If each of us took a piece of our infrastructure and applied it toward this collective goal, we could really make some substantial changes. We are willing to put in that investment.
-What drives it is urgency. That there’s no alternative.

WN: Is there anything that we have missed out on?

-We need to engage all kinds of volunteers. Engage citizen scientists. As we talk about mobilizing volunteers, we need to provide opportunities that run the gamut from “I have 15 minutes” to “I have 15 days with my family”
-We need to prioritize steps to fill in the gaps between what the problems are, where they are and where we are.
-Agencies have all the data but where is it consolidated to make sense of the prioritie?. How in the world do people prioritize what you take on first?
-We need to know the baselines. Create a baseline base camp. Volunteers’ jobs would be to do continued monitoring on public lands, identify needs by agencies and NGOs.
-1. Funding side 2. Identifying what we want this to be all about. Is it Keep it Colorado? Is it Step into it—you can make a difference? We need to be careful about how we talk and think.
-We need to realize that with all our threatening realities, you can still make a difference. Folks want to know that they can still make a difference and world isn’t coming to an end no matter what.
-4 elements
1. Defining mission in projects that have to be accomplished
2. Engaging stewards. Need incentives and marketing
3. Having the coordination capabilities—tied to money.
4. How to engage corporate sector to fully step up to the plate and take on responsibility. Outdoor Rec industry 750 billion$ /year industry but message not getting out there. Here’s one industry that’s benefitting from this and will lose if this doesn’t work. How do we get part of that 750 billion? Gov’t may be able to do it but can’t do it alone

Let’s assume that demand and need for volunteers is fully valued, recognized, and presented, do we have the volunteer supply to meet it? And if not, how do we go about meeting it? How to generate more interest?

-From VOC’s experience, it teeters a bit on both sides. This year our volunteer numbers increased 30%. Because we increased our projects by 40%. You have to provide opportunity in ways that help engage the public. It’s not predictable. We have to be very creative in the engagement process.
-It is incremental. When we thought out the number 1 million. That’s 20% of CO population volunteering. At first thought we thought that wouldn’t happen, but it might happen incrementally. Not just with shovel in hands, but lots of ways. Financial donations, recycling, or committing one day to carpooling, voting. We have to educate people that it’s bigger than actually being on the ground.
-State public land is everywhere. That proximity is key to making sure that everyone who has an interest can go connect with the land and with the resources.
- We need to make sure opportunities we provide are across the board. There are wonderful, intense projects, but only certain people at certain stages of their lives can do them. Different levels of commitment and abilities.
-There are a lot of people out of work and hurting. People may be capable of going out and working and doing things. Look at the history of the WPA and the stewardship ethic developed. Is there a way or model to put together where the corporate sector steps up and pays people to be stewards? Are there ways to put different incentives together and putting together new revenue sources? Creative ways to find the money to do that and create a model in CO.
- Colorado Youth Corps is one way already. Youth involvement. Getting kids from their urban environments. Kids get paid, not a lot, but at a time in their lives when it will stay with them forever.
- There is a model in NY where ppl over 65 can get tax benefits for volunteering. Perhaps there’s a model with that.

WN: Before we were talking about if you build this movement will people come? What I took away is if we do truly collaborate, then we will be able to respond to that call to action.

-There is a continuum of opportunity. Not everyone enters commitment to service or stewardship at the same level. Whether it’s the structure of the opportunity or the population that’s serving.
-We need to better aware of who’s doing what so we can refer to each other. If someone comes to my org and I can’t help them, I can pass them on to you. Being able to have a continuum of opportunities and better understanding what everyone else is doing.

WN: audience questions. Some user groups self-fund stewardship projects (like OHVs and hunter groups). What are your thoughts on this?

-Argue that it’s not sufficient and not appropriate. I don’t have a problem with users providing the base funding, but we need to look closely at who benefits.

WN: is there an opportunity for a national stewardship coalition? Not just CO?

-The federal gov’t is doing this in a way. The White House conference on America’s Great Outdoors talked about 1. Protecting natural lands and ecosystems 2. Reconnecting people in urban systems 3. Let’s Move program 3. Local initiative to preserve natural farms and ranches. Probably the strength in a lot of this will come from the local level by example. CO has always been a leader.