Thenaturalmedic Adventures
Hello there, and thanks so much for joining us here! You are probably wondering what this podcast is all about? In this podcast, we will talk about all sorts of outdoor adventures, but primarily, for now, we will focus on hiking and backpacking. No other outdoor adventure is so accessible to so many people! So please join us as we talk about how to hike/backpack and learn how to hike any length trail from your local neighborhood parks to those long trails such as the Appalachian and others worldwide! Remember... "in every walk with nature; one receives far more than he seeks... - John Muir " See you on the trail!
Thenaturalmedic Adventures
Public Lands Advocacy: How You Can Help Protect America's Natural Heritage
Note: Audio Only, please see video for visual treats on my Youtube Channel...
Our public lands face serious threats from staffing cuts across National Park Service, Forest Service, and BLM as a former ranger explains actionable steps we can take to help preserve these treasured spaces regardless of political stance.
• Contact congressional representatives through congress.gov to express concern about public lands protection
• Support non-profit partners like National Forest Foundation and National Park Foundation through donations or volunteering
• Practice Leave No Trace principles including proper waste disposal, respecting wildlife, and minimizing impact
• Purchase annual passes like America the Beautiful ($80) that provide access while supporting land management agencies
• Consider supporting specialized organizations like International Dark-Sky Association or regional wilderness advocacy groups
• Volunteer directly with land management agencies to contribute time and effort to conservation projects
Until next time, we'll see you out on the trail.
Hello, it's Craig the Natural Medic. I apologize for my absence. I had a 50th birthday extravaganza beginning of the month, but now I am back with a video about how you can help our public lands. Let's will help you. You can go right here on congressgov. This will be the first step. We're putting politics mostly aside here. I'm not really going to discuss politics, but I am here to help our public lands. We can find our members of Congress by going to congressgov, typing in your address or zip code. This is not my address on the screen, but this is what it pulled up. It's based on my location and this is my reps, or my rep and my senators, so I click on these. Let's just go to Martin Heinrich. If we want to write him a little nice note about how we feel about our public lands, him a little nice note about how we feel about our public lands, we can write him by clicking on our little window here.
Speaker 1:Everybody's thing is gonna look a little bit different. I'm gonna fill this out, but I'm gonna cut this out of the video. You can pick a variety of subjects for this particular guy. In my particular case was public lands and forestry, and we're looking at public land staff from a subject you put to whatever subject you want. Feel like a response. Yes, would you like to sign up for Heinrich's newsletter? I'm going to say no and do you grant permission to use? We'll say yes, it's fine, and then, whatever I'm writing here, then I can hit submit and it will send out a message to Senator Heinrich about how I feel about the public land servants being fired.
Speaker 1:Me, coming from a park background, before I was in medicine I was a park ranger for the states of Arkansas and for Texas and a lot of us were doing double jobs. We were very shorthanded and just letting go of a lot of these people that work for the National Park Service, forest Service, blm etc. Doesn't set a good precedent for the protection of our lands. So a good free way to express yourself about these lands is to write your congressmen, write your senators. Another way to help our public lands is to go to places like the National Forest Foundation. The National Forest Foundation is a nonprofit that works alongside the Forest Service. The Forest Service is in the Department of Agriculture. They provide a similar service to us on our public lands.
Speaker 1:Forest Service lands, the National Forest and National Grasslands are managed for what they call multiple use, which means that they can simultaneously be used for timber management, wildlife management, recreation, minerals, oil and gas, etc. However, with less people to work out there, there's less people that can clean restrooms, manage these projects that are going on out there, less people that can take care of those things. They partner with the Forest Service to help here in the Southwest, which would be New Mexico and Arizona. It says they work alongside 11 national forests, so you can. Obviously they'll take your money to help with some of the restoration that they do. But you don't have to. You can go up here to where it says get involved. You can go plant trees. You can be involved with any of their little deals right here. I'm not going to click on those right now, but I'm showing you this so that you will know about it.
Speaker 1:Organizations such as nationalparksorg, which is the National Park Foundation. They are not part of the National Park Service, but they are a nonprofit partner. Same deal. They help with volunteers, they help with other projects that the Park Service is unable to fund, or staff. They're not federal workers, just like the people of the National Forest Foundation, and you can go to Ways to Support here. You can do gifts they do work right here different things here, outreach and you can get involved with them that way. Now the best thing we can do do probably other than those two things of getting involved is get. Of course, we got everybody popping up here. Let me close this. The best thing we can do probably is get ourselves in line with the Leave no Trace.
Speaker 1:If you're not familiar with Leave no Trace, let me give you a brief overview. Leave no Trace was created in the late 90s or 2000s Land managers, biologists, ecologists, etc. And outdoor education and other natural resource managers. They came up with this along with professors in natural resource and forestry programs, park management programs throughout the country, to find ways, just some guidelines, to help our lands.
Speaker 1:Principle one is planning ahead and preparing. Principle two camping, traveling, durable services, disposal of waste, leaving what you find, minimizing campfire impacts, respect wildlife and be considerate of others. Of course they're happy to take a donation, but they provide a lot of education. By adhering to these seven principles, we are protecting the land and being a good steward of the land. Planning ahead and preparing that really helps everybody. You're looking at trails and conditions. You're looking at parks, national forests, etc. Of where you're going. So you're planning ahead, so you are prepared for things you might experience. If you don't have water available, you can plan ahead and figure out if you need to carry more water, if you need to bring certain types of weather gear for colder weather, wet weather, etc. That helps everybody. The traveling and camping on durable surfaces just helps protect the land. You're not causing additional runoff and erosion from camping in places that are sensitive, making your own social trails when you're walking on the trails out there.
Speaker 1:It really hurts me when I see waste out there in our national parks and forests. So disposing of waste properly, that means pack it in. You pack it out, leaving what you find. Especially here in the Southwest, where I live, there's lots of Native American artifacts and ruins and historic ruins that you may find. It's perfectly okay and acceptable to take pictures. You might want to note those areas with your whatever app you're using to travel around, in case some of the land managers are not aware of those resources. Chances are good, they probably are aware of them. But in case they aren't, take pictures, leave only footprints and note what you find. Let somebody know if you find something of unusual characteristics.
Speaker 1:Minimizing campfire impacts, especially here in the southwest where it's super dry. If it's a burn ban, don't have a fire. If you do have a fire, make sure that you're respecting the local laws of your area. Make a fire in a designated fire ring or rock ring or whatever they have at the site and obey those rules. Respecting wildlife that means if you're in an area where you can take your pets, don't let them off leash so they can chase wildlife, don't feed wildlife, etc. And then be considerate of others. That's a tough one sometimes for people. Not everybody wants to hear your music. Not everybody wants to hear loud voices in the middle of the night when they're camping. Those seven principles were enacted by Leave no Trace so that people can help be good stewards and protect the land.
Speaker 1:Our next little hit right here. You can go to recreationgov and you can buy a pass. That helps you and it helps the parks and other resources out there. I have one called America the Beautiful. It's $80 a year but any day use facility. That includes national parks, national forests, blm, I believe it also includes Bureau of Reclamation, corps of Engineers and one other agency. I can get into those for a year for no additional charge Once I pay the $80, that certainly helps. So that's something you can do. The other pass that I have I usually buy a trinket or some kind of fridge magnet when I'm at a National Park store. I have a Park Protector Pass which is $25 a year and that saves me 10% on my purchases. But it also gives them money to operate. The Western National Parks Association does that. One gives them money to operate. The Western National Parks Association does that one. I'm sure other non-profit partners that sell gift items in the national parks have a similar type program.
Speaker 1:Another thing you can look at is called darkskyorg. Darkskyorg works very hard to keep light pollution to a minimum so that we can enjoy the skies like our ancestors did. Now that we have electric lights everywhere, it's difficult to get to a place and see that night sky like we did hundreds of years ago. There's a lot of light pollution out there, so they're trying to get that better. You can look in here and you can get involved in that, but it also allows you to look up places where you can see that. There's lots of them located here in New Mexico, and I don't know about every state, but here in New Mexico we have an organization called New Mexico Wild. New Mexico Wild is a nonprofit that helps with wilderness and, as you can see right here, they are very adamant about a lot of things, but they are trying to protect wilderness and other aspects of our public lands.
Speaker 1:Another thing you can do is a peaceful protest. There are protests going on throughout our nation and if you're wanting to get with one of those groups, you can probably type in to Google, just like I did here protests, public lands and then they have protests, probably in your state capital or wherever you are, to talk about that. Then we have actual land management agency websites themselves which help give you a lot of information out there. This is the Bureau of Land Management, which is the Department of the Interior Agency, and they have a whole menu of stuff you can get involved with by being a volunteer. They have all kinds of programs that they do.
Speaker 1:A lot of the land here in northwestern New Mexico is managed by the BLM and they need all the help you can get in being a good steward. Since I live in Farmington, I am eight miles away from the northeastern border of the Navajo Nation. If you live close to Native American reservations, they probably have access where you can get to their lands and enjoy that. Another option besides going to your federal lands I'm close to the Navajo Nation here and, on the east side, the Apache Nation the Hickory Apache nation is over there and they probably have a similar type program, so something for you to check out. And you can go to the forest service page, which is fsusdagov, similar to the BLM. You can look up your local forest or grassland for recreation purposes or whatever you want to look at. They do volunteers as well.
Speaker 1:Lastly, we have the National Park Service. National Park Week is going on right now. You can find a park, look by topic. You can talk about visiting parks, volunteers, all these things on here. So there's many ways that we can help our public lands. We don't have to get involved in politics, but I know that these are very important to you. If you liked the video, give it a thumbs up, think about subscribing to the channel for more great content like this. I hope this video has helped you. If it did, leave me a comment below and I appreciate that. Until next time, we'll see you out on the trail. Okay, bye.
