It may be frigid outside, but plenty of Metro Detroiters are still getting out on their local trails frequently. What they may not know is that some trails stretch all the way across the state.

The benefits kids reap from nature are well documented, which is part of the reason school field trips often involve excursions into the Great Outdoors. Children with disabilities, however, sometimes get left behind.

What does sustainability look like in Detroit, a city that is going through changes that some consider a renaissance? The Erb Institute talked with five people who are working to make Detroit more sustainable—in wildly divergent ways, from bees, to dirt, to real estate development, to stormwater.

Seven amputees who found themselves atop a 19,347-foot volcano in Ecuador last month probably never envisioned themselves there together.

Detroit Dirt makes waste into a commodity. It takes food waste, green waste, spent grains and herbivore manure and uses an aerobic process to make it into high-quality compost.

A little over two years ago, Timothy Paule and Nicole Lindsey started the nonprofit Detroit Hives, transforming vacant lots into urban bee farms. They also teach the community about the importance of honeybees and conservation.

Utah Diné Bikéyah (UDB) is a nonprofit organization that supports indigenous communities in protecting their ancestral lands. Along with the five sovereign nations of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, UDB got the 1.3 million-acre Bears Ears National Monument designated—the first tribally led national monument in American history.

Brian Merrill is the CEO of Western River Expeditions and the Moab Adventure Center, but he started out as a lawyer. He talked with Outdoor Insider about going from river guide to lawyer to operations manager to COO to CEO, and about the ways he has expanded the business.

Until the last couple of months, no one had used Detroit’s sole campground in more than a decade. In May, the first group of kids arrived to set up camp.

Is water a human right or a commodity? It’s treated like both.

Last month, 120 climbers descended on Horse Pens 40 in Steele, Alabama, for the first-ever large-scale celebration of diversity in climbing: the Color the Crag Festival.

What makes a strong leader in sustainability? Work in sustainability entails immense challenges, and much of the area is uncharted. To navigate it, strong leadership is essential.

Green spaces in a community are important, and not just because they look nice. That's why the city of Dearborn is full of parks and green spaces, from small pocket parks to the 300-acre Environmental Study Area at the University of Michigan-Dearborn campus, according to Dearborn Sustainability Coordinator Dave Norwood.

Kids who spend  time in wild nature reap all kinds of benefits, including improved physical and mental health, lower stress, and higher confidence. Yet many kids and their families have never camped nor hiked. The biggest  barrier to getting in the woods? The significant cost of outdoor gear. Now, “gear libraries” across the United States are addressing this challenge by enabling many organizations serving youths to use borrowed gear—for free.

Mapping Deeper Connections to Nature Through Outdoor Afro

We are killing our planet. Of course, it’s not quite that simple, but, as acclaimed writer Elizabeth Kolbert explains in her Pulitzer-Prize-winning book The Sixth Extinction, humans are to blame for the impending mass extinction that will spell the end of many of the world’s species.

More than 1,000 eighth graders in the Grand Rapids Public Schools will get a chance to see their city from a new perspective next week: from a canoe. A program called Canoemobile , which brings canoes to urban areas across the country for hands-on learning experiences, is setting up at Riverside Park May 8 to 12. Grand Rapids Parks and Recreation is funding the program, which will include canoeing and other educational activities, such as learning about the river, water-quality testing, hiking,

At 20 state parks and recreation areas across southern Michigan, groups of volunteer stewards regularly roll up their sleeves to help protect and restore natural areas.