This article originally appeared in the CNPS 2023-24 Annual Report.
Last September, Lucy Ferneyhough and Vern Goehring went to Eureka, California, for the fall CNPS Board and Chapter Council meetings. Here, CNPS leadership would soon vote to approve the organization’s first Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice (DEIJ) Vision Statement, a document summarizing CNPS’s commitments to, and reasons for, a focus on DEIJ values.
Sitting in a softly lit, public library meeting room, Lucy and Vern prepared for their roles—Lucy as a CNPS Board Member and board sponsor of the CNPS DEIJ Committee, Vern as a key member of the committee. When the agenda item came up, Vern offered a few remarks, reflecting on his decades-long career working with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and later as an environmental legislative advocate, including 20 years as the CNPS lobbyist.
“Over the years I saw people talking about what we’re doing for wildlife, but not what we’re doing for people,” Vern shares today. “I started thinking, ‘What if this is as much (or more) about access and connection between people and nature as it is providing benefit to nature?’” That early realization motivated Vern to spend the next decade helping groups with urban stream restoration in underinvested communities, chair the first environmental justice session at a CNPS Conference in 2015, and ultimately, dedicate hours working with Lucy and other members of the CNPS DEIJ Committee to draft the organization’s DEIJ Vision Statement.
For Lucy, who works as the Native Plant Program Project Manager at the University of California, Santa Cruz Arboretum and Botanic Garden, her focus on native plants has been an antidote to the nihilism, inequity, and despair characterizing today’s crisis-filled times. She says many of her peers are struggling to find meaning, belonging, and an economic foothold. “What got me out of my own depression was learning about native plants,” Lucy says. “The more I learned, the more I felt embedded in nature, a part of it. People who care—and who need care—are still here; Native peoples are still here; native plants are still here. Experiencing all this made me feel hope and responsibility and empowerment.”
She took those insights to the DEIJ Committee, where she and others worked with DEIJ consultants The Avarna Group for nearly two years to gather and incorporate thoughtful feedback and review from CNPS chapters, members, and staff. As the Board voted unanimously to approve the statement, it was a moment capturing years of growth and collective understanding. A day later, CNPS Chapter Council officers, representing CNPS local chapters, also voted to approve the statement after heartfelt sharing and discussion.
“Overwhelmingly, it was embraced,” Vern says. “People have known that we had the intent behind our DEIJ values, but if you don’t say it, is it real? Once you write it down, you’re not only thinking about it, you’re seeing it. It’s a mirror that you can’t ignore.”
People have known that we had the intent behind our DEIJ values, but if you don’t say it, is it real? Once you write it down, you’re not only thinking about it, you’re seeing it.
Lucy acknowledges that CNPS is not going to solve or heal the history of violence, racism, and injustice in California today, but she urges us to use “our power and privilege to expand our circle of work and meaning and hope. There is still so much beauty, so many special places, and so many people working to make things better,” she says. “I feel like that is what we’re doing here at CNPS, and the DEIJ Vision Statement is a commitment to sharing that experience with as many people as possible.”
