Continuing off of my last month’s blog post about many different ways humans can have a healthier relationship with the environment, this month I continued my journey/research/selfies in Grand Teton National Park, White Sands National Monument, El Paso, Dallas and Austin. I’ll be focusing this month’s journal entry on my time in Wyoming. It closely related to my research about the Environment & Health as it relates to access of green space.
Jackson elevation 6,800 ft, Grand Teton peak height 13,770 ft.
Right at the beginning of the month from March 6-12, I had the pleasure to join the National Park Service’s annual “NPS Academy”. This year the academy was held at the striking Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. The three themes of the week-long program were diversity, connections, and legacy. These are very similar to the mission of St. Edward’s University as well so I felt it a great place to learn further about others with similar interests as myself.
The entire time I was in Jackson, Wyoming the temperature was never warmer than 39°F. However, being in the middle of the country and at such a high altitude the weather was easily bearable with the proper field clothes even the day that it snowed 4”. The most amazing thing about the Tetons is how flat the surrounding area is before the mountains. The mountains shoot up another 7,000 feet almost out of nowhere from the never ending sage brush floor below. The sage floor of the Grand Teton range provides a year long food source for small animals and the moose and elk that call this area of Wyoming home for the Winter.
National Elk Refuge
During our week in the NPS Academy, the participants each split up into different groups to address a variety of issues of the National Park Service is currently facing and our own opinions of ways to address them. Our topics included the presence of technology in parks, access to the parks, and the controversy surrounding wolves in Grand Teton. Yes, you guessed it! I chose to be in the group researching access to the National Parks (aka the largest green spaces in the country).
View from 20,000 ft up
We did a case study of visitors to Grand Teton National Park and the neighboring Yellowstone with help from the Visitor Service workers at these parks. In accordance with other federal agencies, the Parks service currently has two programs to increase their visitors to new prospective visitors.
The first of these programs is National Parks Week from April 16-24. It’s a week where all National Parks are free to visit. The second of these visitor initiatives is “Every Kid in a Park” which grants free entry to 4th graders and their families.
The Resident Fox at Teton Science School Residences
In researching the visitors to Grand Teton and Yellowstone, my group found an interesting dilemma. The vast majority of the park visitors (~95%) are from outside the local communities. More generally speaking, these visitors tend to be in between 45 and 65 years old, white, and wealthy.
Jackson, Wyoming is largely a tourist town where rich people will have a second house or condo up in the mountains. This influx of wealth into a relatively small city of 10,000 people causes all services in Jackson including healthcare, housing, transportation, and groceries to be more expensive. Take a look at the graph below which compares the cost of living in Jackson to the rest of the United States.
Now you may be wondering “What do these social, racial, and economic factors have to do with access to green space?”. The answer is everything! Unlike other parts of this region, the service industry in Jackson is booming and the local, year-long residents choose to live here because of this. This expensive cost of living in Jackson means that parents often have to work two or three jobs to afford housing and all other basic needs, considering that the minimum wage in Wyoming is only $7.25/hour. They simply do not have time to take off work on the weekends (peak time for the service industry) to bring their school children to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park.
Aldo Leopold sitting outside the cabin we debriefed in every day
In addition, the entrance fee just increased to $30/ day per car which is the second most deterring factor in access to parks after the reason previously mentioned. To best understand how the Park Service can respond to this growing crisis in Jackson (and nation wide) we interviewed local people and went to the Latino Resource Center.
Double rainbows at St. Edward’s University in Austin
At the end of the week, we presented our suggestions to a Board of Park directors and employees from the National Parks Foundation. The most obvious change we could see is to make the parks free to local communities surrounding any parks around the nation. They were all very respectful of our conclusions and are actively considering this as a possibility. It only makes sense that the communities that work around these areas are able to enjoy them, especially in Jackson, where the park itself is the reason that the Cost of Living is so expensive. It is the just thing to do.
White Sands National Park, March 13th
However, the lack of green space to lower income communities is not unique to the those around Grand Teton National Park who have been priced out of an iconic feature of our country. In fact, this is the norm for low income communities around the country and desperately needs to be addressed. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, the benefits of green space are far reaching and varied from mental, physical, and public health perspectives.
A 2013 study out of the University of California at Berkeley found that even after adjustment for ecoregion, “African-Americans were 52% more likely, Asians 32% more likely, and Hispanics 21% more likely to live in HRRLC [Heat Risk-Related Land Cover] conditions compared with non-Hispanic whites” (Cushing, Jesdale, Morello-Frosch). This evidence demonstrates how important tree coverage in urban areas is in relation to the health of the communities are around them in the presence of extreme heat events. The previous economic and social side effects listed, including minimum wage, cost of living, etc. often place an undue burden on people of color in urban areas. These communities’ neighborhoods are often densely populated and severely lack access to green space, or more simply put in this study TREES. Heat-related deaths will only increase as 1. People continue to move to urban areas 2. Green and Public Health Infrastructure is lacking in these urban centers 3. Climate Change.
A second study published a meta-data analysis in the Journal of Public Health summarized the benefits of urban green spaces shown in other studies. They comprised a list of the physical, mental and socioeconomic benefits of green space. They warned that it is hard to make a causal relationship between green space and these proposed benefits because of other limiting factors and poor research design. The most fascinating impact of urban spaces question in this study is that “exposure to green spaces may have an impact on urban socioeconomic health inequalities” (Lee, Maheswaran). Another research team published in The Lancet also agrees with their findings (Mitchell and Popham). People in these urban areas may not have a park that is considered safe and may likely suffer consequences in their physical health due to lack of exercise.
Wild Basin Wilderness Preserve
These socioeconomic differentials in physical activity may represent a pathway towards development projects in urban areas. These other limiting factors from the previous study were also present in evidence from the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health in an article. It found that these factors include “neighborhood walking tracks, coastal proximity, friends’ social support, dog ownership and intentions” (Ball, Timperio, Salmon, Corti, Roberts, Crawford).
The article points out an important point for legislators and urban developers to consider before creating a new park or trail. It isn’t just the access to green space that can be problematic but also the culture in these areas (social support, lack of dog ownership, etc).
I am fortunate enough to live in an area with relatively good access to green space and from a family that encourages physical activity in the outdoors. My experience in Eco-Lead and at the NPS Academy inspire me to seek environmental equity in my future endeavors. While the previous studies do point some well-deserved doubt on the benefits of green space, I personally feel that it is an imperative feature of a healthy community. It is disheartening that some people can not walk or bike to a decent park or preserve but that this is an issue largely being ignored by legislators across the country. I postulate that greater access to parks and large green spaces may help ease the strain on the American healthcare system. It is likely that asthma rates, obesity, and heat-related deaths would decrease with more parks AND a culture that celebrates physical/mental/community health.
I’ll leave you with this quote from Aldo Leopold since I was in the same cabin as he was many years ago.
“We face the question whether a still higher ‘standard of living’ is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free.”- Aldo Leopold
Sources:
Ball, Kylie, Anna Timperio, Jo Salmon, Billie Gilles-Corti, Rebecca Roberts, and David Crawford. “Personal, Social and Environmental Determinants of Educational Inequalities in Walking: A Multilevel Study.” Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health 61 (2007): 108-14. Web.
“Jackson, Wyoming Cost of Living.” Jackson, Wyoming Cost of Living. Web. 16 Apr. 2016.
Jesdale, Bill, Rachel Morello-Frosch, and Lara Cushing. “The Racial/Ethnic Distribution of Heat-Risk Related Land Cover in Relation to Residential Segregation.” Environmental Health Perspectives 121.7 (2013): 811-17. Web.
Lee, A.C.K., and Maheswaran. “The Health Benefits of Urban Green Spaces: A Review of the Evidence.” Journal of Public Health 33 (2011): 212-22. Web.
Leopold, Aldo, and Charles Walsh. Schwartz. A Sand County Almanac. New York: Oxford UP, 1987. Print.
Mitchell, Richard, PhD, and Frank Popham, PhD. “Effect of Exposure to Natural Environment on Health Inequalities: An Observational Population Study.” The Lancet 372.9650 (2008). Web.