Hundreds of people poured into Buckley Park on Saturday morning for Durango’s 2023 Earth Day Festival following a Procession of Species parade up Main Avenue. Live music, fresh food and a variety of vendors were set up in the park for a springtime celebration.
Area organizations such as Durango Botanic Gardens, La Plata Food Equity Coalition, The Good Food Collective and Durango Pride Festival marched up Main Avenue shortly after 10:30 a.m. Some participants dressed to impress in creative costumes that would be judged in a contest later in the day.
The parade led to Buckley Park, where about 26 organizations, including Fort Lewis College, Durango School District 9-R, the city of Durango and others were waiting to engage with the community.
In an introduction to the festival, emcee Sanford Johnson said Earth Day is about appreciating people’s ancestors who cared for the land and being good stewards of the environment for future generations to come.
“We represent a long chain of human beings that have cared for this space,” he said. “Someday, there’ll be another group of people looking at us as the ancestors that cared for this space for them. That’s what Earth Day is all about. It’s having gratitude for the people that came before us, that cared for this beautiful place, and accepting our responsibility to have something of deep value for the people that come after us.”
He introduced Lyric Rodriguez, a Durango High School student who is raising money for a trip to Sydney, Australia, where she has been invited to sing at the Sydney Opera House this summer. She took the stage near the center of Buckley Park and sang Katharine Lee Bates’ “America the Beautiful.”
Various organizations took the opportunity to connect with the community and share what they’ve got going on this spring. The Southwest Conservation Corps, for example, was celebrating its 25th anniversary.
Michaela Grubb, ecological monitoring program coordinator for the corps, said the organization is looking to hire for many positions and it is gearing up to perform ecological surveys around the greater Durango area.
She said the corps partners with the Bureau of Land Management to perform soil botanical surveys to get a broad understanding of what’s unfolding on BLM lands. Surveys can help determine if lands are being over grazed, if invasive species have moved in and how plants are handling the climate crisis.
“Being out there and seeing what the landscape looks like and contributing to science as a whole, it’s just such a great feeling,” she said.
Enrique Orozco-Perez, representing Compañeros: Four Corners Immigrant Resource Center, said the organization’s executive director is stepping away from the role and Compañeros is searching for someone to fill the position.
But otherwise, things are business as usual for the immigrant resource center.
“Right now our big pilot program is this legal assistance program, immigration legal assistance that Catalina Diez, who’s right there, is running,” he said. “That’s been super impactful for our undocumented community.”
He said he is leading a supplemental education program for Spanish-speaking kids. The program gives the kids a chance to flex their Spanish language at Fort Lewis College, accomplishing two things: Engaging them with the college to keep them interested in higher education, and allowing them to continue practicing their Spanish to keep their heritage language alive.
“Continuing our direct services, continuing our advocacy, making sure that the voices of our immigrants are being heard, and we’re creating platforms to be able to allow them to stay,” he said.
Johnson said Sage Fresh Eats and Zia Taqueria were the 2023 Earth Day Festival’s biggest sponsors. He also gave a shout out to the city of Durango and several other sponsors, including First Southwest Bank, Shaw Solar, Eagle Insulation, Visit Durango, the League of Women Voters La Plata County and La Plata Electric Association.
A full list of sponsors is available at earthdaydurango.com.
cburney@durangoherald.com
