Photos by Larry Robinson/The Daily Sentinel
Iris Salamanca, diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility information assistant for the White River National Forest, poses for a portrait inside the Unaweep Canyon on Feb. 28. One of Salamanca’s main roles in the newly created position is overseeing sign translations from Spanish to English across the White River National Forest, a role she began while working as a public information officer for the Gunnison area Lowline Fire last summer. According to Acting Deputy Forest Supervisor Kevin Warner, Latinos make up anywhere from about 25%-40% of the populations around the White River National Forest.
When Grand Junction resident Iris Salamanca worked as a public information officer for the Lowline Fire in the Gunnison area last summer, translating information into Spanish, she said she might have guessed that 10 or 20 people would have downloaded those translated fire updates.
She then learned the translation was downloaded more than 500 times in one day.
“That shocked me so much I teared up. I would have never imagined that many people were looking at that. And then the second day was over 600, and I was just feeling like I made an impact,” she recalls.
These days, Salamanca is able to benefit the public through her Spanish-speaking skills and cultural insights as a Latina in a newly created position on the White River National Forest, serving as its diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility information assistant. She’s filling an important liaison role in a forest that surrounds communities where, according to Acting Deputy Forest Supervisor Kevin Warner, Latinos make up anywhere from about 25%-40% of the populations.
“We’re super-fortunate to have been able to bring Iris onto our staff,” he said. “The intent behind the position really is to work directly with the Spanish-speaking community to help the White River National Forest to better meet the needs of that part of the larger community that we serve.”
Salamanca is helping with things such as translations of media releases and information at trailheads.
“But more importantly she’s really trying to help us understand what we need to do so we can do better as a forest in welcoming everyone onto the White River National Forest,” Warner said.
With housing availability and prices being a challenge in the region covered by the White River National Forest, which is headquartered in Glenwood Springs, Salamanca continues to live for now in Grand Junction, and expects to continue doing so for a while, working some from home and commuting occasionally to her office or to forest-related events. In Grand Junction, she previously worked for the Bureau of Land Management Grand Junction Field Office in roles that most recently included visitor information services and volunteer coordinator, where she was involved in projects such as desert cleanup and graffiti-removal initiatives.
BIG-CITY GIRL
Salamanca’s path toward a career in public-land management began in an unlikely place. She was born and raised in the Los Angeles, which didn’t exactly offer easy access to public lands. Her parents came to the United States from El Salvador, after Salamanca’s grandmother sent her dad away for his safety due to the level of violence there, Salamanca said.
From an early age, Salamanca has had a love of animals, which ended up having a bearing on her academic focus in college. She said her family had pet pigeons around the house when she was young, and in high school she realized that people could work in careers related to wildlife. She ended up getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife conservation and management in 2018 from Humboldt State University in California, now known as Cal Poly Humboldt.
She then went to work at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, working with animals such as giraffes and kudus, which are African antelopes. She enjoyed working there, and yet she made what was the difficult decision to give it up to take a three-month internship as a biological technician with the BLM in Grand Junction. But Salamanca figured the internship would provide the adventure of being able to hike into remote areas to work, something she wanted to try while she was young and able to do so.
“Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith. That was my leap of faith. ‘We’ll see how it goes,’ “ she said.
Iris Salamanca, diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility information assistant for the White River National Forest, poses for a portrait inside the Unaweep Canyon on Feb. 28. Salamanca’s new job gives her an opportunity to pass on her love of the outdoors to other Spanish-speaking people.
It was worth it, she says. She loved the internship and it led to a second one, patrolling and helping manage the Black Ridge Canyons and Dominguez Canyon wilderness areas, doing things such as breaking down user-created fire rings.
“My supervisor really helped me appreciate and understand how lucky we are to have wilderness areas,” she said. “It definitely got me more in love with public lands, I think, and the fact that they are so accessible here.”
That supervisor was Dan Ben-Horin, a national conservation lands specialist for the BLM in Grand Junction. He said Salamanca didn’t have a background in wilderness management, but was “just so passionate and so capable” that the BLM brought her on for the wilderness assignment.
“She ran with it and really embraced that desire to protect landscapes,” he said.
Ben-Horin recalls Salamanca joining in an overnight outing to hike and monitor all of Dominguez Canyon and fitting right in with seasoned rangers, despite having grown up in the big city.
ENGAGING COMMUNITY
After her second internship, Salamanca was able to go to work full-time in visitor information services for the BLM in Grand Junction, later also taking on the role of volunteer coordinator.
One community project she spearheaded that she considers particularly rewarding arose after she was driving Colorado Highway 141 west of Whitewater and saw a lot of blue graffiti on rock walls. It angered her, and she organized a community-based project to remove it, working with the Western Colorado Climbers’ Coalition. She was gratified to see around 30 people volunteer for the task.
Salamanca said she thought that climbers and the community at large are proud of the public lands in that highway corridor and would want to be engaged in removing the graffiti.
“For them to be able to see the change, to see (the graffiti) go away, I feel like it’s rewarding for them, just feeling like they helped manage their lands, because these are their lands, they’re everybody’s lands,” she said.
Last year, it appeared that Salamanca was headed back to California, and back to wildlife work, as a biological technician in the Six Rivers National Forest. She already had accepted that job when the White River National Forest approached her about its job opening.
She said she found it a pretty easy decision to take her current job. She said she felt like it was a way to give back to the Latino community and embrace a part of herself that she doesn’t regularly get to show.
“It’s a side that just doesn’t come out as often since I left home,” she said. “Now it seems like I get to embrace it again, and I’m so grateful to have that opportunity, getting to speak Spanish more often.”
FEELING INCLUDED
Salamanca got to represent the Forest Service over the holidays in an annual Posada Christmas tree-cutting event that the White River National Forest puts on with Defiende Nuestra Tierra, a Latino-outreach arm of the Wilderness Workshop conservation group. Posadas are a Latino Christmas tradition.
“The amount of people that came out was amazing and I had that same feeling from back home. It was very family-oriented and celebratory and it reminded me of home, it reminded me of being with my family. I felt like I was being included,” she said.
Said Warner, “We really have been striving to do a better job in reaching the Spanish-speaking communities that are near the forest.”
Many of the employees on the White River National Forest don’t speak Spanish, and when it comes to the demographics of the forest’s staff, “Spanish-speaking communities don’t see themselves in a lot of our faces either,” he said.
He said the forest’s staff has been trying to figure out how to make improvements in terms of things such as putting out more information in Spanish, being better able to communicate with Spanish-speaking populations during incidents such as wildfires, and hiring more people reflective of those populations.
Iris Salamanca’s path toward a career in public land management began in Los Angeles, but was solidified when she left the San Diego Zoo Safari Park to take a three-month internship as a biological technician with the BLM in Grand Junction
Salamanca said she has known herself what it is like to feel like an outsider at times, and enjoys being able to provide information to Spanish-speaking populations about public lands. She thinks about her own parents and how she’d like them to have that information. She said her parents had been oblivious to the concept of wilderness and what makes it special. But after they visited her in Colorado, her dad had a new appreciation of wilderness when she walked him to the Dominguez Canyon wilderness boundary and explained what wilderness was, she said.
Salamanca appreciates what she thinks is a willingness by many public-land agencies these days to acknowledge the existence of Spanish-speaking communities who deserve information on public lands. She also thinks having Latino and Spanish-speaking representation on agencies’ work forces makes a big difference. On trails and elsewhere, she watches people’s demeanors change the moment she starts speaking to them in Spanish, as they become less standoffish and more comfortable asking questions.
“I just love seeing how much more relaxed they get. They should be comfortable on their public lands,” she said.
Ben-Horin said Salamanca’s new position is a great role for her.
“Iris is a rock star. She has an awesome personality, she’s really easy to work with, just great working with community and just building partnerships,” he said.
Warner said, “Iris is one person. She can only do so much. But she is a huge asset and a huge help for us.”
