Getting the call to be selected as one of four women to take part in researching trade-off situations within a National Park was a very exciting day. From the first group meeting we had, I knew that we were on the verge of contributing to something important. My research partner and I went on to select the Grand Canyon as our national park of interest. After fumbling through about 10 different trade-off situations in the park we finally landed on the interactions between helicopter tourism, tribal communities, and the canyon’s natural environment.
During the first phase of research we focused on reviewing historical documents and peer reviewed articles related to helicopter flight research in the canyon. We quickly confirmed our suspicions of historical inequities playing a part into how helicopter flights came about in the canyon. We discovered how much tribal land was reduced in order to establish the park as a destination for profit and tourism. Now don’t get me wrong the park was also established to conserve the land for future generations, but when one of the primary motivations is also to make a profit that’s when we start to see injustices and contradicting activities occur. We confirmed that one of these contradicting activities was the establishment of helicopter tourism making it the perfect focus of our trade-off research.
The trade-off was between how much income the tourism provided to local tribal communities versus the adverse environmental effects of the tours. The next phase of our research was my favorite weekend of the whole year and actually allowed us to visit the canyon! We all were able to interview tourists first hand to gather information about the opinions on flights in the canyon, and what side of the trade-off seemed more important to them. We now have entered the final phase of my group’s contribution to the research which is writing out our findings in an article.
This project really meant a lot to me personally because environmental justice is my true passion. Being able to contribute to unveiling environmental injustices existing today, on top of being able to work with four other amazing women was one of my favorite college experiences.
Jessica Simon
On the fieldwork in Grand Canyon (Photo: E. Kellner)