Outdoor Allies: Kurt Hellmann

Ever wondered how you can do more for public lands but you aren’t sure where to start? Outdoor Alliance’s Outdoor Allies series explores how other outdoor adventurers got their start in advocacy work and their advice for how you can harness your passion for the outdoors into advocacy for the land and water you love. Kurt Hellmann lives in Seattle and works as Wildlife-Recreation Coexistence Senior Coordinator for Conservation Northwest, a conservation NGO focused on connecting, protecting and restoring wildlife and wildlands across Washington state.

What do you like to do outside and how did you first get connected with the outdoors?

One of my earliest memories outside was sprinting around my backyard and then suddenly pumping the brakes to watch toads hop across the garden. To an extent, I feel like I haven’t changed much. I find myself loving movement in the outdoors—gravel biking, rock climbing, backcountry skiing, trail running—and pausing to observe and take in the radically alive landscapes we’re fortunate to have in Washington. The state has an incredible topography filled with extremely diverse ecosystems. Exploring the outdoors continues to fuel my passion for land and wildlife conservation.

Tell us about your work at Conservation Northwest on wildlife and recreation. How did you get into that work?

Within nanoseconds of moving to Washington state in 2018, I started volunteering with Conservation Northwest’s Community Wildlife Monitoring Project. In doing that, I quickly uncovered a passion for scrambling across the Cascades while also contributing to cutting edge wildlife monitoring and conservation. Meanwhile, I started building a career in the outdoor recreation field with various nonprofits. While seeking to plant my feet firmly in both conservation and recreation, this Wildlife-Recreation Coexistence program with Conservation Northwest was a clear fit for me. My role over the last couple of years has been to better the relationship between resource conservation and recreation opportunities across public lands in the state. It’s brought me to explore and contribute to the intersection of recreation and conservation: impact mitigation, visitation management, recreation ecology, and visitor outreach. In this work I’m fortunate to partner with many different and talented people—land managers, recreation stakeholders, conservation practitioners, scientists, and Tribal nations on various recreation projects, policies and education efforts.

There’s been quite a bit of conflict between recreation and wildlife, and a lot of time spent educating recreationists about how to limit their effects on wildlife. How do you think about the relationship between wildlife, conservation values, and outdoor recreation? Is there anything you wish people better understood about the relationship between wildlife and recreation?

It’s important to know that we ALL have an impact on the landscape when we recreate, no matter what recreation activity we participate in. Our favorite activities can disturb and displace wildlife, and those effects can vary in intensity depending on the type of activity, time of day, the species type, habitat setting, and the frequency and the predictability of recreation. In this day and age when we have more humans outside than ever, we’re challenged to think a bit more holistically and contemplate our relationship to the natural world, especially when we choose to visit public lands.

As recreation continues to grow and expand, there is a need to better understand how recreation activities interact with wildlife. While we still have a lot to learn about the intricacies of recreation and wildlife dynamics, we do know that wildlife have specific needs related to space and time. Many species have crucial times and places that are important to keep free of human-caused disturbances, like in critical habitat (i.e. denning, nesting, or mating sites, and in seasonal ranges and wildlife corridors) and during vulnerable times of year (i.e. winter and early spring, or when rearing young). To best promote the coexistence between wildlife and recreation, we need to better protect these times and spaces.

To limit our disturbances to wildlife or habitat, most might think of Leave No Trace principles like securing food/waste, sticking to established trails and campsites, and giving wildlife space—all of which are important to utilize when outdoors. But what do those principles mean in the present day when the number of people outdoors has increased dramatically? How do we ensure that accumulative recreation use is sustainable for our ecosystems, let alone for trails themselves? Answers to these big questions are found at the granular level—within local communities and well-rounded collaborative efforts that try their best to respect the spatial and temporal needs of wildlife and other natural resources.

What do you hope the future of the outdoors looks like?

My hope is that the future of outdoor recreation can reflect the needs of diverse landscapes and wildlife, while also continuing to provide amazing outdoor experiences for people. If the last few years taught us one thing, it’s that outdoor recreation opportunities are crucial for people and communities. And it’s my hope that people think of public lands less as our weekend playgrounds, and more as alive landscapes teaming with wildlife, that need deep respect and stewardship in the face of complex modern-day issues (like climate change, increasing severity of wildfire, and continued human development pressures to name a few). I hope that all of us in the outdoor recreation world possess a certain openness in finding the best path toward sustainable recreation to ensure that we’re doing recreation in the right ways and ultimately protect our favorite places.

Lightning round (one or two word answers!)

Favorite close to home spot: Index, WA

Most used piece of gear: Climbing shoes

Favorite wildlife encounter: Grizzly bears feasting on moths in the Montana alpine (from afar)!