Bears, Dollywood, and a Gateway Organizing Strategy for Conservation
Now that I am technically something of a civilian, no longer working for a “big green,” and have more time to write for myself again, I wanted to put an idea into the world that I have been thinking about for years: how do we grow and sustain the conservation and outdoor movement, especially at a time when it is so badly needed? I think we need a dedicated gateway community organizing strategy. The movement spends enormous energy trying to bring people into our campaigns. We should spend more time building relationships where people are already gathering.
My wife, daughter, and I recently spent a week in and around Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We hiked to Kuwohi, the highest point in the park and a renaming I was proud to champion through my work with the Coalition for Outdoor Renaming and Education. I got my Kuwohi merch, naturally. We biked nearly twelve miles around Cades Cove on a vehicle-free day, enjoying the mountain views and, in my case, producing buckets of sweat while pulling a bike trailer. We saw bears, biked the Gatlinburg Trail, rode the gondola up to Anakeesta so our daughter could run around and play, visited Dollywood, and spent time throughout Gatlinburg, Sevierville, and Pigeon Forge. It was an amazing trip.
As we moved through the park and surrounding communities, I kept thinking about the disconnect between what is happening in the conservation advocacy space and what most visitors are actually experiencing on the ground. Most families arriving in the Smokies are not thinking about the Department of the Interior’s fiscal year 2027 budget, staffing reductions, efforts to weaken the Endangered Species Act, the shrinking of national monuments, or attempts to whitewash the history presented in national parks and on public lands. They are thinking about where to park, what trail they can handle, whether they might see wildlife, where they are going to eat, and what memories they will take home.
That does not mean they do not care. It means the movement is not meeting them in the places where that care is already taking root. The Smokies welcomed 11.5 million visitors in 2025, and in 2024 those visitors spent more than $2 billion in surrounding communities. Everywhere we went, we saw a real cross-section of the country: multigenerational families, young couples, older adults, Black and brown families, international visitors, serious hikers, first-time visitors, and people who were simply there to enjoy the day. In a quiet way, it felt like Frederick Douglass’s vision of a composite nation, people from different backgrounds gathering in the same place and finding their own relationship to it.
Zoom out, and millions more are gathering in national parks, national forests, gateway communities, climbing areas, campgrounds, visitor centers, and trail towns across the country. They are choosing to spend time in places shaped by conservation, and you can hear the connection forming in the way they talk about the wildlife, the views, the trails, the history, and what those experiences mean to them. The relationship is already beginning. The opportunity is to help that care grow into a deeper, lasting connection to the places themselves and to the work of protecting them.
As our field has professionalized, more energy and funding have shifted toward legal, policy, and communications strategies. That work matters. But we have not invested with the same consistency in the person to person work of building relationships around place. Since the pandemic, even more organizing has become digital, circulating through the same mailing lists, communities, and social media networks. Digital organizing allows us to reach people quickly and at scale, but it can also become a closed ecosystem where we repeatedly speak to people who already understand the language, know the threats, and agree with us. Meanwhile, millions of people who have already demonstrated some connection to these places move through them without ever encountering the movement.
One model I love is Access Fund’s climbing steward program. They work with local partners in high-use climbing areas. They offer coffee, conversations at the crag, volunteer opportunities, and special events. Most importantly, they build relationships with people while they are actively experiencing the place. It is a simple but powerful model: meet people where they are, help them understand what is at stake, and give them a way to stay involved.
I could see a broader gateway community strategy taking two forms.
An organization could resource its chapters, affiliates, or regional staff to establish a consistent presence around major public lands and gateway communities, particularly during peak seasons.
The other would be coalition-led. Tribal Nations, local organizations, and national partners could pool resources around a shared plan, a seasonal steward program. Either way, the work could include outings, volunteer days, film screenings, talks, community gatherings, and conversations at trailheads, campgrounds, visitor centers, festivals, and other places people are already moving through. Organizers and stewards could help visitors understand what makes a place ecologically, culturally, and historically significant, connect what they are experiencing to the larger issues affecting it, and offer meaningful ways to remain involved after they return home.
I am not arguing that every family vacation needs to become an advocacy pitch. I am arguing that people are already open to these places in a way that no email subject line can manufacture. We should recognize that moment and create authentic ways for people to deepen the relationships. Done well, this could build volunteers, donors, storytellers, advocates, and long-term relationships while directing more attention and resources toward the communities caring for these places year-round. It could make the movement a visible and perennial presence rather than something that appears only when the next bad bill is introduced, a monument is threatened, or another crisis begins.
People are already showing up. The connection is already there. The question is whether the conservation and outdoors movement will keep waiting for them to find us, or build the relationships and presence to meet them there.
We do not have to manufacture care. We have to organize around it.
