As environmental concerns persist for people around the globe, many have pointed to the need to preserve the land for the sake of our children and grandchildren. It has become more and more evident in recent years that our children agree.
One young American boy, Robbie Bond, has emerged as one of many kids making changes, working to encourage caring about and preserving the land that sustains us.
In 2017, aged just 9 years old, Robbie Bond founded Kids Speak for Parks, a non-profit organisation advocating for the protection of America’s national parks and public lands. Raised in Hawaii, Robbie had been a participant in beach clean-ups and a variety of other environmental conservation efforts since the age of 3.
Robbie may have started down the path towards environmental activism as just a toddler, but he was no less impressively young when he created Kids Speak for Parks. Robbie was concerned by the American federal government’s decision to review 27 national monuments and parks, putting them at risk of being decreased or destroyed.
Like many young people nowadays, Robbie was even more concerned by the lack of action undertaken by many powerful adults, and decided to form a non-profit group with the primary goal of ensuring that national parks and monuments are preserved for current and future generations.
Robbie has undertaken a number of activities in his efforts to promote and protect public parks. He created a website for Kids Speak for Parks, and spent more than 6 months travelling to a number of national lands and monuments, including the Bears Ears monument and its surrounding land in Utah.
Robbie’s family recorded videos of him exploring the monuments and conversing with fellow visitors, as well as local officials, about the future of the monuments. Robbie made these videos available publicly, in the pursuit of his intention to emphasise the connection that young people have with public lands and the need we have to protect them.
He has spoken extensively at local schools and community meetings, received thousands of signatures supporting public parks, and called for their protection before Interior Department officials in his nation’s capital city of Washington D.C.
Robbie’s work with Kids Speak for Parks is centred around young people. He is striving to raise people’s awareness of the importance of public lands and of the challenges these lands face, due to forces such as the fossil fuel industry. Robbie has also been working hard to encourage people, especially kids, to become actively involved in efforts to protect the lands.
Robbie Bond has thanked his parents and grandparents for sparking his passion for nature, and credited them with supporting his work with Kids Speak for Parks. He has become one of a growing number of kids fighting strongly for environmental protection, an issue which will be of significant and increasing concern to younger and future generations.
Like many other young activists, Robbie has shown that, while young people may provide their parents with hope, today’s youth are often finding themselves at the forefront of demands for desperately needed societal change.