Your favorite outdoor spaces are irreplaceable. Whether you find your connection to nature while hiking in the mountains, picnicking at a city park, or moving cattle on horseback, the outdoors is a place that needs care and protection. The topic of land conservation is where people from many different backgrounds meet and something out of the ordinary happens—they all agree. Hiker and adventurer got to learn this firsthand when she went to visit Welch Cattle Company in Larkspur, Colorado. Here’s what she learned from the experience.

 

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şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř: Where do you find connection with the outdoors?

Myranda Hausheer: I love everything outdoors. Some of my favorite activities are hiking, mountain biking, fly-fishing, skiing, camping, backpacking, off-roading, and paddleboarding. The longer I live in Colorado, the more hobbies I seem to collect! But getting outdoors doesn’t have to be complicated or intense—I also love taking walks at the local park or drinking coffee on my patio. Spending time outside makes such a positive impact on my life. It helps me get physically stronger, gain confidence (especially on solo adventures), and improves my mental health and overall well-being. I love seeing the wide variety of folks out on trails and meeting new people who love nature too. It’s really special to feel connected to people from different backgrounds through nature.

What do hikers, conservationists, and ranchers all have in common?

We all love the outdoors and share a profound connection to the natural world—preserving it for future generations is a shared responsibility and mission. As an outdoor enthusiast who has a variety of hobbies, following trail etiquette, practicing Leave No Trace ethics, and educating others about how to care for our wild spaces are important to me. And these things are generally valued by all who love and cherish our natural resources and recreation areas.

On my visit to Welch Cattle Company in Larkspur, Colorado, I learned more about how much outdoor enthusiasts and ranchers have in common. Both communities share an admirable level of determination and grit, whether that’s summiting a challenging peak or fixing fences on a hot summer day.

What are some of the benefits of cattle grazing and ranching? 

Similar to bison, cattle have been part of a natural cycle of grazing land, providing food for humans for centuries. Grazing even provides a variety of beneficial ecosystem services.

• Water cycle regulation: Cattle grazing increases the population of native plants and returns nutrients to the soil. This cycle improves soil quality and water retention, preventing excessive runoff from rainfall.
• Wildfire suppression: Grazing helps manage overgrowth—often inclusive of invasive weeds and shrubs—that would otherwise act as wildfire fuel. By reducing overgrowth and increasing soil moisture, grazing significantly reduces the intensity of a fire, should one catch.
• Wildlife habitat preservation: Cattle can coexist with many species of wildlife—some of these species even rely on grazing for survival. By grazing land instead of developing it, we’re protecting essential wildlife habitat. Additionally, invasive plant removal from grazing helps restore native plants that are crucial to wildlife, including insects and birds.
• Carbon sequestration: One of the best ways to sequester carbon in the soil is with proper grazing management. When cattle graze, they chew down the plants to a healthy level. When the plants regrow, they pull more carbon from the atmosphere than would be sequestered without grazing. Cattle’s hooves also help extract nutrients from manure and plant residue back into the soil, increasing soil nutrient levels.

Grazing lands in the United States are crucial for carbon sequestration, as they are estimated to contain 10 to 30 percent of the carbon stored in the soil. On land where crops would be unsuccessful—29 percent of the total grazing land in the United States—cattle become part of a process to upcycle vegetation, inedible for humans, into high-quality protein.

How do the benefits mentioned above align with your conservation values as an outdoor recreationist?

We all have an important part to play in taking care of nature. Although our roles as hikers, conservationists, and ranchers are different, they’re each crucial. We all love nature, enjoy the benefits of getting outside, and care for animals (wildlife and cattle) and the planet. If we can all do our part and help educate future generations, then we can leave a positive impact for years to come.

Why is land and natural resource conservation important to ranchers?

Anyone who works in agriculture, ranchers included, cares deeply for the environment and has a vested interest in sustainability. They want to care for the land and leave it better for future generations—just like outdoor recreationists. And without careful, strategic management, there are no cattle. Ecosystems all work in symbiosis, and if the land and the organisms that inhabit it are not healthy, it won’t be there for recreationists, conservationists, or ranchers.

 

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Paid partnership with National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, a contractor to the Beef Checkoff. Learn more at .

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With plenty of spandex clothing, flashy social-media activations built just for a weekend, and massive laser shows beaming out over the crowd, modern festivals might not look like hotbeds of activism. But it’s embedded in their DNA. Woodstock, the Monterey International Pop Festival, and the Harlem Cultural Festival in the 1960s, all carrying a peace-and-love political valence, were their precursors.

Today’s versions remain rock-star-studded and intend to fix world problems—and now they’re aware of the amount of carbon humans have since released into the atmosphere, too. Festivals are increasingly becoming a gathering place for young people concerned for our environment and hoping to create positive change—as well as have a great time.

As a music, food, and travel editor, I’ve attended dozens of festivals, clomping around on the grassy fields or beaches where thousands of people gather. I’ve been most impressed by a growing group of socially minded festival organizers, chefs, and musicians who are greening their events’ infrastructures, sharing their stages with environmental activists, and making sure attendees understand climate change and how to help.

Collectively, these fests now reach hundreds of thousands of people and are having a tangible impact. The Great Northern, a winter festival in Minnesota, reliably draws 200,000 attendees. Farm Aid attracts 30,000 and has multiple times campaigned Congress to incorporate climate-resilient agriculture into legislation.

Here are my favorite U.S. festivals pushing for a greener world.

1. The Great Northern

Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, January 25 to February 4, 2024

Mission: Communicate the importance of winter and how to protect it as temperatures rise

One way to communicate the urgency of climate change to a wide swath of people: creative programming. Hence , which celebrates the cultural and environmental importance of winter in Minnesota, will have 50 events in 2024.

The eye-catching offerings range from a village of saunas and a 100-foot-long outdoor bar—yes, the kind that serves alcohol—carved out of ice, to a “Climate Solutions” speaker series with talks by the Project Drawdown executive director, Jonathan Foley, and the well-known eco-drag queen Pattie Gonia, among others. Melanin in Motion, an organization dedicated to getting Black people involved in outdoor recreation, will host a fireside chat, and the sauna village will have nights geared toward queer, trans, and body-positive communities.

Jovan C. Speller Rebollar, the event’s executive director, says she is particularly excited about The Last Supper, cooked by the celebrity chef Sam Kass using ingredients at risk of disappearing as global temperatures rise. On the menu are chocolate, chickpeas, and more.

“We love our food here,” Speller Rebollar said. “[Climate change] becomes real when you can’t have the things that are a part of the ways in which you celebrate, the ways in which you come together … and take care of yourself.”

At the last festival, on January 29, the ecological-death-care advocate Katrina Spade spoke on natural organic reduction, a burial process that turns the human body into soil. The former Minnesota State Senator Carolyn Laine was an attendee, Speller Rebollar said. On March 6, Minnesota State Representatives John Huot, Mike Freiberg, and Samantha Sencer-Mura introduced a bill to legalize natural organic reduction.

2. Old Salt Festival

Location and 2024 dates TBA (2023 event was June 23 to 25, in Helmville, Montana)

Mission: Promote regenerative agriculture

The newest gathering on the list is Montana’s , an initiative of the Old Salt Co-Op, an association of generations of ranchers who want “to do for meat what microbreweries have done for beer,” as the event founder, Cole Mannix, said. Old Salt Co-Op promotes regenerative animal agriculture, and it processes meats that are sold through a restaurant and online shop.

Community and local sourcing are essential, and when Mannix says community, he is including not only his neighbors down the street but the non-human, ecological world. He envisions a society where everything, down to the shirt on his back, is locally sourced.

“It’s not easy to do regenerative agriculture. It’s a whole societal shift,” Mannix said. “We have to completely remake ourselves. All of us, customers, producers, the whole supply chain, and I don’t really know how to talk about that other than just spend three days together and immerse ourselves in a beautiful place.”

The first Old Salt festival took place in June on the Mannix family ranch in Helmville, Montana. Local writers recited poems about the land, local bands played, local vendors sold knives and leather goods, and regional conservation and ranching organizations spoke. An 80-pound anvil was launched 300 feet in the air, and 1,600 people ate food cooked over a live fire.

Mannix said, “You can’t do that in a conference room.”

3. Pickathon

Happy Valley, Oregon, 2024 Dates TBA (2023 event was August 3 to 6)

Mission: Create a model of a truly green festival

Festivals require gargantuan amounts of energy. From the light shows, to the sound systems, to the food vendors, the average festival emitted approximately 2500 tons of carbon in 2019, according to , a company that tracks European music festival emissions. A whopping 41 percent of those emissions come simply from attendees traveling to events.

That’s why Pickathon, an indie music festival outside of Portland, Oregon, chose a site only a 40-minute drive from the city and incentivizes attendees to bike or use public transit. Pickathon was also the first festival to utilize solar arrays and, in 2023, was selected by Toyota to be the first to use the company’s hydrogen fuel cell generator.

Originally founded in 1999, Pickathon has become an experiment in eco-friendly festivals, one that can seem radical compared to the industry standard. The stages here are built between the trees of a forest, and the materials for each are reused every year. The Treeline Stage, designed by architecture students at Portland State University, looks like a lattice of blooming plants and will be repurposed for an outdoor classroom. The Woods Stage is made from materials found lying on the forest floor, tree branches shaped into something between a nest and a cave. There is no single-use plastic. Attendees receive a metal cup upon arrival, and rent their dishware.

Though you may not recognize the Americana, rock, and hip hop names on the lineup, Pickathon bookers have an eye for up-and-comers: Sturgil Simpson, Andrew Bird, Leon Bridges, and Big Thief all played here before making it big.

4. Deep Tropics

Nashville, Tennessee, August 16 to 17, 2024

Mission: Show how electronic festivals can go green, too

Though Pickathon gives it a run for its money, Tennessee’s claims to be the greenest music festival in the country. Even coming close would be impressive for an EDM festival where DJs sit on stages in front of multiple movie-theater-sized screens flashing psychedelic visuals, the sound system must be clear and bone-shaking, and the light and laser displays that EDM is known for must expand over a throng of thousands.

According to the event website, by recycling, composting, minimizing single-use plastic, building Instagram-ready art with sustainable materials, and planting trees to offset carbon, organizers divert 93 percent of the festival’s waste from landfills and create more energy than they consume. (.) Vendors, too, focus on sustainability, selling vintage and upcycled versions of the sheer shirts, fringe jackets and occasional fedoras common among EDM fans.

Deep Tropics attracts top talent. In 2023, headliners included the critically-acclaimed SG Lewis, LP Giobbi, and Troyboi.

5. Sacred Acre

Ninilchik, Alaska, 2024 Dates TBA (2023 event was September 8 to 10)

Mission: Raise awareness about the dangers of bottom trawling

nearly triples the population of Ninilchik, Alaska, with an influx of 2,500 ravers. They come, yes, for the bass-heavy music, provided in 2023 by Of the Trees, Boogie T, and Daily Bread, but this EDM festival is a vocal advocate against bottom trawling, a fishing industry technique in which boats drag large, conical nets across the ocean floor.

Sacred Acre uses minimal plastic and educates attendees on the dangers of trawling, which can entangle sea turtles, dolphins, and whales, and harm the delicate plant life in seabed habitats. The festival also runs foraging and fly-fishing expeditions, and places its DJs to perform among the Alaskan waterfalls.

6. Farm Aid

2024 Dates TBA (2023 event was September 23, in Noblesville, Indiana)

Mission: Protect American farmers and age climate-resilient agricultural techniques

Giants of musical genres can definitely convene numbers. In the case of that number was most recently, 20,000, as the founders Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, and Neil Young performed, and so did Margo Price and Dave Matthews, who are board members.

Attendees ate shrimp and grits, burgers, brussel sprouts, chicken tenders, and more, all sustainably raised and sourced from local farms as part of the festival’s Homegrown Concessions. The Homegrown Village educated attendees on the work of American farmers, especially as it pertains to environmental health. Soil, like trees, sequesters carbon, and farmers can optimize it with the right techniques.

“Farmers have this incredible capacity to help us store that carbon through the ways that they’re stewarding soil and growing good food,” said Jennifer Fahy, Farm Aid communications director. “We’re supporting them doing that.”

7. Ohana Festival

Dana Point, California, 2024 Dates TBA (2023 event was September 29 to October 1)

Mission: Conserve the ocean environment

Like Farm Aid, utilizes the star power of its famous founder, in this case Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, to raise awareness for ocean conservation. The main stage abuts the sands of Doheny State Beach, where Veder learned to surf and now headlines Ohana.

Industry heavy hitters populate the rest of the lineup, which in 2023 included the Killers, Haim, the Chicks, Foo Fighters, and the Pretenders. There’s a collegial atmosphere, as performers pop in and out of each others’ sets as surprise guests. This past September, Van Halen’s lead vocalist, Sammy Hagar, joined the Killers for a cover of Van Halen’s “Why Can’t This Be Love?”

At the smaller Storytelling Stage, researchers, activists, politicians, and even surfers give talks about the environment, and attendees can sign up to volunteer at environmental organizations with booths nearby. Ohana gives a portion of its proceeds to the Doheny State Beach Foundation and San Onofre Parks Foundation.

8. Hawaii Food and Wine Festival

Hawaii, Maui, Oahu, October 18 to November 3, 2024, weekends only

Mission: Promote local, sustainably-sourced food in Hawaii

The , founded by the James Beard Award-winning chefs Roy Yamaguchi and Alan Wong, is all about foods local to the leafy islands. For 13 years, it has brought in dozens of the world’s top chefs, some with top awards of their own, and issued a challenge: prepare something excellent using at least one ingredient grown in Hawaii.

Each of the festival’s three weekends takes place on a different island, jumping from Hawaii, to Oahu, to Maui. The most popular events, like the Roy Yamaguchi Golf Classic and an extensive tasting at the Hawaii Convention Center, happen every year, along with newer offerings like adventures into the taro fields and fisheries, where attendees can try their hand at harvesting and, in 2023, an event highlighting indigenous cuisines from across the world. Expect plenty of color on your plate: black caviar served resting atop the bright white meat of a coconut cut in half, the pink of fresh raw fish, the green Hawaiian breadfruit ulu, and, of course, wine on the beach in whatever color you like.

A portion of ticket proceeds go to nonprofits that support sustainable agriculture like the Hawaii Ag and Culinary Alliance and the local hospitality industry, totalling $3.5 million over the festival’s lifetime. On November 18, after much of Maui burned in wildfires, a special edition of the Hawaii Wine and Food Festival was held on Maui to encourage responsible tourism to the area and raise money for the Kokua Restaurant & Hospitality Fund, which has supported industry workers impacted by the fire. You can also find more info here on how a visitor can give back after the tragedy undergone by Hawaii in 2023.

9. Art With Me

Miami, Florida, and Çeşme, Türkiye, 2024 Dates TBA (Miami event was December 8 to 10, and the Turkey event June 23 to 25, 2023)

Mission: Advanced sustainability and low-waste partying

Consider a photo negative of Art Basel Miami, a posh art festival with over-the-top, star-studded parties. At Art With Me, you can be barefoot. You can attend cacao ceremonies and talks on sustainability. You can do yoga, then lie in a circle of dozens of people, heads in the center, feet out, and meditate, all on Miami’s quiet Virginia Key Beach.

Happening the same week and in the same city as Art Basel Miami, which has some glam electronic-music afterparties of its own, Art With Me is a lower-key music-and-art festival. Programming is family-friendly and focuses on restoration for both its attendees and the environment. Through its Care With Me foundation, the festival has lobbied the Mexican government to ban single-use plastic. (Art With Me was founded in Tulum, Mexico, and has another iteration in Turkey.) And, through recycling and composting, Art With Me organizers say they create almost zero waste.

Art Basel and Art With Me share a love of art—massive sculptures dot Virginia Key Beach—and great DJs. In 2023, Polo & Pan and Underworld headlined Art With Me.

More Festivals!

If you have room in your schedule, check out , an EDM festival that’s received A Greener Festival’s highest level of certification;, an Alaskan folk festival committed to protecting salmon habitat; and one just outside of the U.S., , a Canadian electronic and arts festival that relies exclusively on reusable energy.

is a writer, editor, and former ski instructor based in Brooklyn who has covered music festivals since her college days in New Orleans, a city with more fests than days of the year. She is managing editor at the biannual music, food, and travel publication Fifty Grande.

See the below for two outdoor festivals still to go as 2023 wraps up. The Indio International Tamale Fest in Indio, California, is December 2 to 3, and the Ullr Fest, Breckenridge, Colorado, is December 7-9.

The 29 Best Outdoor Festivals in 2023, from Music and Sports to Food and Film

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From farm to table, we show our journey into learning more about how local meat is raised and processed into our kitchens.

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