This Black History Month, Celebrating the Work of EFP Alum, Jovan Bryan

Jovan Bryan is making sure Black people can be themselves in nature.  

Bryan, who was the inaugural Land Conservation Fellow in Mass Audubon’s Environmental Fellowship Program (EFP) in 2022-2023, currently works at the Connecticut Land Conservation Council (CLCC) as their Community Conservation Coordinator. He is the first person to hold this role, which was created in 2023. His job is to facilitate outreach into communities that are underrepresented in nature and conservation spaces, often for Black and other BIPOC groups.  

“We look at things like access and belonging,” he said. “It's almost like a match-making type of program.”  

Forming Relationships Between Land Trusts and Affinity Groups

Bryan works to pair up affinity groups looking to deepen their connection to nature with land trusts (nonprofits managing land, often, in this case, for conservation purposes) who want to make an impact in underserved communities.  

The idea behind the initiative is two-fold: one, land trusts get to intentionally make space for communities they don’t often see on their public properties; and two, communities who have traditionally experienced barriers to nature access get a safe, welcoming, and thoughtful avenue towards the great outdoors.  

Bryan’s most successful initiative so far has been organizing private guided bird walks on land trusts with affinity groups. “It’s just them and their group, so they feel safe and comfortable,” he said. “We lead them on a guided walk and introduce them to birding, which is also an activity that has its own barriers.”  

Some of these barriers are more obvious, he explained—folks can’t afford the expensive equipment birding often involves or simply were never taught the skills to try it out on their own. Other obstacles can be more subtle; sometimes people assume that things like birding or hiking or even just enjoying the outdoors are not for them if they’ve never seen people who look like them doing it, Bryan said.  

Making Space for BIPOC to be Themselves in Nature  

Representation is a big part of Bryan’s task. “There are assumptions made from who’s being represented, like how you should act,” he said (for example, the idea that nature is only to be enjoyed in silence). “We just try to break that down; you can show up as your authentic self, and you just engage with nature differently, and that should be celebrated.”

In line with this goal, Bryan takes steps to design the bird walks for the groups attending them: the guides on the walks are, whenever possible, representative of the group they are taking; the time they go out is selected so there aren’t too many other people on the trails, (so that the groups don’t feel like they are being watched or judged); and they actively encourage authenticity from the group’s participants.

“That’s the biggest thing—just being able to be yourself outside in nature,” he said. “Non-BIPOC folks don't realize there’s a privilege of getting to go outside and being yourself.”

Career Launched from the Environmental Fellowship Program  

A lot of Bryan’s current work stems from his time in the EFP. “I got really interested in the people that were visiting our places,” he said. “Specifically,  ‘who is coming here, who is able to come here?’”  

As part of his capstone project, he created a toolkit about how environmental organizations can more authentically serve underrepresented communities, what that means, and what it can look like. Much of what he does now draws on that research, as he builds up relationships between nature and affinity groups, and, perhaps even more significantly, helps change assumptions about who nature is for.

“We're not having these hikes just so that we see more people out there,” Bryan said. “It is also so they can see themselves out there. Being able to bring your authentic self into the space—and unapologetically so—is so important.”