To reach more people and to, among other things, educate community members on exactly what the Mancos Conservation District is and does, it’s starting a podcast called “District Dialogues: A Conservation Podcast.”
The first episode will be out Friday, Jan. 24.
“We wanted to come up with a new, unique way that we could share some conservation stories,” said Sensa Wolcott, the district’s watershed coordinator and “idea person” behind the podcast.
The benefit of a podcast, Wolcott said, is “that people could utilize it on their own time and not have to go somewhere at a specific date and specific time to participate and learn.”
The challenge is that “none of us have made one before,” Wolcott said.
To make it happen, then, there was a lot of groundwork and many questions.
“Like how do you edit it,” said Reese Greenbaum, an AmeriCorps member at the district who’s done a lot of the “grunt work” in making the project a reality. “And the different posting sites. I thought it was just posted places, I didn’t know it was that complicated.”
“The editing I knew would be complicated,” Greenbaum said.
Starting Jan. 24, it’ll be available on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and the Mancos Conservation District website.
The plan is to launch an episode quarterly, and send it out with their newsletter. So if you’re interested, subscribe to their emails to know when they post a new episode.
Though the podcast market is certainly established and it may feel like “everyone has one,” they’re “trying really hard to make it interesting enough where it’s targeted to who we want listening,” said Taylor Schultz, the education and outreach coordinator at the Mancos Conservation District, who also is working on the podcast.
And so they’re bringing in a variety of speakers from all different “stakeholder groups” across Montezuma County who will “tell their stories about conservation,” while someone from the conservation district hosts and spearheads the conversation, Wolcott said.
The first episode will cover what a conservation district is and why they were created.
It’ll also delve into why they’re doing a podcast in the first place – what a special district is and give an overview of Mancos Conservation District’s upcoming year, Schultz said.
Looking ahead, Wolcott said other episodes will cover a range of topics like soil health and agricultural land and how they’re interrelated, or forest and watershed health, and water conservation.
A larger theme is the level of collaboration in and around Mancos, and how critical these partnerships are.
“We work closely with private landowners and ag producers, but we also work with federal landowners and tribal entities,” said Wolcott. “I think showing that collaborative effort and showing how everyone is working together to conserve natural resources in our area is really one of the highlights I would like to bring out.”
And though the stories may be Montezuma County-specific, it doesn’t mean they “don’t tie to bigger issues. But we really want to focus on that local aspect and bringing those stories out.”
Wolcott said telling stories is something she first got interested in during her graduate work.
“The people aspect is a really important part of conservation,” said Wolcott. “I got really interested in using stories and telling stories to inspire people to care more about their natural resources.”
The podcast project is made possible by an education and outreach grant the Natural Resources Conservation Service awarded to the conservation district about six months ago.
In addition to the podcast, that grant is supporting “a slew of activities,” like climate-smart workshops, their annual water festival, a movie night and BBQ, and some other educational activities like field trips and lessons at schools, Schultz said.
Wolcott said she hopes people take away this “Idea of connecting to our natural resources and conservation on a more personal level,” and Schultz is “excited to highlight all the different programs that MCD has to offer.”
“If you’re not in-the-know on our Facebook page, it’s like we’re just another office in Mancos,” Schultz said.