Jade Stevens is on a mission to make California’s outdoors more than spaces where people of color are side-eyed yet tolerated. Stevens’s mission is to create equity in access and business opportunities, so she started the 40-acre Conservation League. It’s California’s first and only Black-led conservation land trust.

Its name represents a failed promise from the Union Army following the Civil War. Emancipated people in the South were promised to receive both land and a mule, but President Andrew Jackson took back the promise after President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.

The league recently purchased roughly 650 acres of land surrounded by Tahoe National Forest in Placer County. Located approximately 70 miles northeast of Sacramento, the land has lakes, trails, and space for other recreational activities. Stevens said while the previous landowners kept the trails private, the league plans to open them to the public. She adds that The 40 Acre Conservation League will manage the forested land.

A Need For Inclusive Spaces

In the U.S., about 12 percent of the land and one-quarter of the oceans are within permanently protected areas, which include marine sanctuaries, national parks, and wildlife refuges. The National Park System comprises 425 national park sites.

The overwhelming majority of national park visitors are white. While Black people make up a little more than 13 percent of the population in the United States, a recent study conducted by the National Parks revealed less than 1% of visitors surveyed were Black.

While there are no official numbers to break down the visitors by state, the disparities within the industry have been apparent to Stevens. She’s even had her own experiences with feeling unwanted.

“I remember store owners closing their doors, asking us if we were supposed to be in that area,” Stevens says as she recalls a cycling trip from Los Angeles to San Diego. Stevens and the women she was traveling with stopped for snacks along the way.

“[We were] one of the only [few groups of] Black women who are out there cycling, and I think that made me think more about why that is the case. Why am I the only one? Why do I not feel welcome or safe?”