Conservation in the 21st century means looking beyond the environment
Growing up in the shadows of the Castner Range near El Paso, Texas, Ángel Peña saw the mountain range on his way home from elementary school every day. Where Mexican yellow poppies once bloomed every spring, he watched developments rise, with the high desert shrinking by almost half over the course of his lifetime.
Now the executive director of the nonprofit Nuestra Tierra Conservation Project, he says, “I grew up there on Dyer Street, near the range, and never really understood its importance until I became an adult, and until I became a parent.”
