Slice of Albuquerque Will be Turned into the Children’s Bosque: More Kids in the Woods Projects and Children’s Forests Nationwide Receive $1 Million Funding

09/03/2012 7:07
USDA Blog » Slice of Albuquerque Will be Turned into the Children’s Bosque: More Kids in the Woods Projects and Children’s Forests Nationwide Receive $1 Million Funding

An exciting and pertinent project funded by a government service – who knew.

Excerpts below -the full article can be read from the link above 

Urban children in Albuquerque, N.M., will soon be able to descend on 20 acres of forestland along the Rio Grande River, where they will have the freedom to climb onto an elevated fort, hike on a trail through the cottonwood forest to learn about the different plants and animals and do what all children are supposed to do: play outside.

Children’s Bosque – Spanish for forest – is one of eight Children’s Forests and 23 More Kids in the Woods projects in 18 states awarded a total of $1 million in cost-share grants from the U.S. Forest Service. Each of the winning projects has the backing of partners and local communities, and winning proposals either expand current projects or create new ones.

In Albuquerque, it’s a brand new project on an idle piece of land that pulls together a cultural center, a Forest Service employee and the elementary school her children attends.

“They’ve been trying to do something with this site for at least eight years,” said Alicia San Gil of the Forest Service’s Region 3 office in Albuquerque. “We want to make it a space that will attract kids. We’ll make signage, trails and an outdoor classroom that looks like a fort. This site is an urban area with not a lot of play spaces, and certainly not a forested area where they can go. This land is perfect.”

“When we started thinking about the Children’s Forest, it all made sense,” she said. “They have a lot of activities at the center, and the kids can walk back and forth to the Cultural Center from the land. And we have all these employees here who would be great mentors.”

Tess Michaels