UCSB Arts & Lectures will host an evening with Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia. Chouinard will present Protecting Public Land, in Conversation with Hal Herring, 5 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 9. The virtual moderated discussion with Chouinard will feature clips from Patagonia’s recent film, “Public Trust.”
In a time of growing polarization, Americans still share something in common: 640 million acres of public lands. But today, despite support from voters across the political spectrum, these lands face unprecedented threats from extractive industries and the politicians in their pockets.
This conversation with journalist Hal Herring will explore the future of public lands and of the planet. The event is a part of UCSB Arts & Lectures’ Winter 2021 House Calls series.
Chouinard is an itinerant adventurer, activist and iconoclastic businessman. In 1973, he founded Patagonia, a mission-driven company known for its environmental and social initiatives. Chouinard is a surfer, mountain climber, gardener, falconer and fly fisherman.
Chouinard, who lives in Ventura, has written several books; the latest titled “Some Stories” is a selection of his favorite stories and memories, a chronicle that reveals the evolution of his thoughts and philosophies.
Chouinard’s business memoir, “Let My People Go Surfing,” has been published in 16 languages and has sold more than 500,000 copies. His other books include “The Responsible Company,” “Simple Fly Fishing” and “Climbing Ice.” He was the executive producer of the 2019 investigative documentary “Artifishal,” and the award-winning documentaries “DamNation” (2014) and “Public Trust” (2020).
Chouinard co-founded the Fair Labor Association, 1% for the Planet, the Textile Exchange, The Conservation Alliance and the Sustainable Apparel Coalition. On the first day he was legally able to do so, Chouinard personally filed the paperwork in Sacramento, California, for the company to become a benefit corporation.
Herring grew up in north Alabama, where he spent his childhood roaming the woods near his home. His father, a public defender, instilled in him a strict sense of civic responsibility. Herring dropped out of high school to work on government contracts, planting seedlings in the sagebrush steppe of the West, but returned to school and earned his journalism degree from Tulane University in Louisiana.
He moved to Montana and spent the next decade traveling the country writing about guns, sports and hunting while utilizing America’s public lands for recreation and food.
In 1999, when a friend sent him an article titled How and Why to Privatize All Federal Lands, he realized this threat to America’s public lands could have an enormous impact, not just on his livelihood, but on the future of this shared resource. As a result, Herring turned from writing about the things that public lands provide to focusing on the topic of public lands themselves.
Over the past 20 years, he has discovered a murky, yet well-funded effort to wrest control and ownership of these lands away from the American people.
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