(cheerful music) - Raise your hand if you haven't been snowshoeing before.

- [Elisa Lopez] You can learn science in the classroom, but really, where it's gonna stick to you is like, when you go on Saturdays and Sundays with your family, and you go check out the bark of a tree or you see a American Robin eating a worm.

- I found something!

- [Elisa Lopez] That's how it's gonna stay with you forever.

- Oh!

There's a lot on that one.

How many different caddisflies can you count?

- [Park Ranger] There goes lobster, crabs, snails.. - So he made this?

- [Park Ranger] Yeah.

- That is so cool.

- [Elisa Lopez] I didn't feel outdoorsy as a child growing up around hundreds of trees because that area was a work area, and so we didn't see it as a recreation.

If we want this land to be conserved and stay recreational, we gotta make sure that everyone is educated and not just wealthy white families.

- This is public land, and the public land is for everybody to enjoy.

(cheerful music continues) (traffic noise) - [Elisa Lopez] So Team Naturaleza decided to come to this area because it had a high percentage of Hispanic, Latinx people.

For two years, the Environment for the Americas and The National Science Foundation did surveys, and they found that people weren't really using the trails or going into the National Forest or exploring outdoors.

And they looked at the science test scores for K through 12, and fifth grade test scores were very low.

And so definitely the informal environmental education portion was not there.

We need to really get down to the root of the problem, which is education, access to jobs.

If we don't educate our current Latinx youth right now, so that they can, you know, later on get better jobs so that they can go out on the weekends and learn about nature and then, you know, say they nature's beautiful, I want to take care of it.

- Traditionally, a lot of these outdoor recreation areas have been geared towards English speaking people.

When the Forest Service started back in the early 1900's, there was no let's make this kiosk sign in Spanish and get our Spanish speaking population in the forest.

That was never the intention.

Now they're trying to do it, and I give them kudos.

Like, thank you for trying to create like more inclusionary programs and events.

But, there was over a hundred years of, not necessarily excluding people, but not.. - Not including.

- Not necessarily including.

- [Elisa Lopez] General invitations don't work for Latinx communities.

It's just that culture, where like you don't show up anywhere unless you're invited.

And so you really have to get that personal invitation, like, hey, Elisa, come hiking with us.

Or, hey, Elisa, come to this workshop about beavers.

- [Park Ranger] So, when we see caddisfly casings in rivers, and it's a clue that tells us that's a healthy river.

- [Meshach Padilla] If we go to any park or a National Forest, and you see either a Park Ranger or a Wilderness Ranger, they're in their full getup.

You got your Forest Service badge or your park badge.

It can be a little unnerving.

The less time you spend in the national lands, whether it be park or a forest, the less you know of like, oh, this is actually someone that has nothing to do with whether it be ICE or Border Patrol.

- [Elisa Lopez] I grew up with a lot of the other immigrant kids and our cultural families.

I had a ton of green space, beautiful views.

I just didn't know how to appreciate it.

I didn't have anyone to talk to about it.

I hop on Latino Outdoors, or I hop on these Audubon societies, and I see hundreds of people like us, our age, who speak Spanish or Latino and have this environmental background, but they're not in places like Wenatchee.

People who get their degree in Environmental Education, who are of a diverse background, they don't stay in the rural towns.

People like us just flock to where like the big national parks are, where there's big cities nearby too, but we need to stay in these places that really need us the most.

- The Latinx/Hispanic community here has not been targeted to do outdoor recreation, sports, even just hiking or learning about nature outside of school.

My first language was Spanish, but I never once heard my parents or siblings or cousins, nobody talked about tree bark or nobody talks about, you know, the little pieces on the branch where the flowers come out or anything like that.

- [Park Ranger] But I'm not sure if this would be a black hawthorn or another species of hawthorn.

- We're having to learn science Spanish and then teach it to the community.

(speaking Spanish) - [Elisa Lopez] So when we're educating, we're telling people (speaking Spanish) this is the bark of the tree, and the bark of this tree protects this tree from fire.

This area is 40% Hispanic/Latinx.

Hopefully one day we'll see that exact 40% on the trails, you know, buying passes to go into the National Forest.

So that one day, you know, there's no need for (speaking Spanish) to take people out.

Like they're already seeing themselves.

They're feeling comfortable going by themselves.

So that's our hope is to one day not have to exist.

- [Announcer] This series is made possible by the generous support of the Port of Seattle.