Public Lands: You Can’t Protect What You Don’t Know
A founding member of the Outdoor Industry Association and former top executive at companies like The North Face, Sierra Designs, and Camelbak, NOLS grad Sally McCoy is all for protecting public lands. But in order to do that, she points out, the outdoor industry needs to help make public lands accessible to a more diverse community.
“A graduate of NOLS and then Dartmouth College near New Hampshire’s White Mountains, McCoy was an outdoorist from early childhood (her family went on frequent camping trips, including one on which “little bear cubs walked over us,” she says)…
HER NORTH STAR:
Public lands belong to all Americans. How do we create a more personal attachment for the health of Americans and our public lands?
HER PHILOSOPHY:
According to McCoy, our industry has generally shown outdoor participation as “something white people do.” It has not represented diverse participation to our industry’s own detriment. We’ve also assumed that the way that Baby Boomers experienced the outdoors is how the next generation wants to experience it. Both of those assumptions are problematic.”
Topics: News
