Last year, Pamela Slaughter spotted more hawks than she had ever seen in her life in the Zumwalt Prairie Preserve in Eastern Oregon. She viewed Hells Canyon from the top of Mount Howard and plans to hike the Blue Mountains Trail in September.
But the grandmother and community leader remembers a time when she and many other Black people did not feel free to explore these places.
“All the way back to the 1980’s, skinheads were wanting to make Portland their home base,” Slaughter said. “We were hiking and we were harassed by skinheads. And then a couple months later, we were at Multnomah Falls and we experienced something similar.”
About four men surrounded Slaughter on the trail while her children were nearby. The group dispersed when some hikers came along, but after that Slaughter and her children avoided hiking trails, sticking close to home.
In 2015, Slaughter decided to reclaim the mountains, rivers and trails of the Pacific Northwest for those who felt unwelcome in these places due to racist incidents. Today, Slaughter leads the nonprofit People of Color Outdoors for outdoor enthusiasts who are people of color. Members camp, fish, hike trails, paddle canoes and recently rode ebikes while viewing waterfalls near Hood River. The organization offers group activities and trainings through many partnerships, including U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and Bird Alliance of Oregon.
Early beginnings
Slaughter understands that, in any group, people want to see them themselves reflected.
She started the Oregon chapter of Outdoor Afro for Black people in 2015 and then decided to create a group that would welcome people of all races who showed interest.
“I was hearing from white parents of BIPOC children that they weren’t safe outdoors,” Slaughter said. “And they were being harassed when they had their children with them, so we have white parents as members as well.”
She started POCO as a weekend hiking group in 2017. It evolved and became a nonprofit with 495 members in 2020. Today, People of Color Outdoors has 7,100 members.
Safety in numbers
These days, Slaughter sees a positive reaction from other hikers and explorers. A favorite place is Whitaker Ponds, where people used to step off the trail and avoid POCO hikers back in 2015.
“Now they recognize us,” Slaughter said. “They see us as experts so they’ll ask us, ‘Where can we find a turtle?’ or where we have the best luck seeing a kingfisher, that sort of thing. So I’ve seen really big changes in places that we frequent. Smith and Bybee Wetlands is another one where people will stop and chat because they feel like they know us. When we go to places like Forest Park, people are very friendly. They might not know us, but they don’t see us as people that are intruding on their space.”
POCO offers group activities between 60 and 100 times a year. They are accessible through their website and on Facebook. The nonprofit wants to be seen.
“We are out here, this is what we do,” Slaughter said. “As people see that and accept it, it’s more normal.”
Youth guardians
Slaughter hopes that young people will become stewards of the environment by engaging with POCO’s youth programs. She worries that young people are growing up connected to video games, digital screens and phones rather than spending time outdoors.
“If you have a whole generation growing up who don’t have that connection, then they might not have the same level of attachment,” Slaughter said. “That’s a concern that I have now.”
A few years ago, Slaughter started the program POCO Guardians for children from preschool to 5th grade to explore friendship and nature. Kids in the program play games, share meals and learn about the environment. Many of them become leaders for their peers. They learn from experts in the field, like wildlife biologists, park rangers and ornithologists.
“We have had some real success with our Guardians,” Slaughter said. “Some weren’t excited or sure about being outdoors but they’ve come for multiple weeks. One of my first-year students, who was nine, is 13 now and he’s my intern. He teaches the children — he’s a student teacher.”
Partnerships
As POCO has grown in numbers, other organizations have discovered the group and provided activities, trainings and grants. Volunteers help organize events.
The World Salmon Council taught the Guardians about salmon and they dissected a salmon at Columbia Park. Camp Westwind offers scholarships for family camps because it is expensive and not many families in POCO go to camp. OMSI is a partner with day camps and overnight camps, some scholarships and daytime classes.
POCO will be heading out to the Tillamook Forest this fall as part of a partnership with the State Forests Trust of Oregon. The group has focused on safety with trackers and Polk County Search and Rescue. It provides workshops on how to stay safe in the woods and how to use tracking knowledge to return to safety if lost.
Emily Pinkowitz is the education director for Bird Alliance of Oregon. She has enjoyed working in partnership with POCO.
“When I started at Bird Alliance of Oregon, I came with a passion for nature, but no real experience birding,” Pinkowitz said. “I am a mixed-race person, and I was somewhat intimidated about going out birding. So POCO was meaningful for me personally — it was one of the first groups that I went birding with. It was also meaningful that I could bring my kids. They try to make it multi-generational. As a multi-racial family, I felt comfortable. Pam does an incredible job making people feel welcome.”
The main driver of the partnership is to continue equitable programming.
“Bird Alliance of Oregon’s education mission is to build inclusive flyways between joy, learning and advocacy with people in nature but we can’t do it on our own,” Pinkowitz said. “We need to collaborate with communities of color who have been active in building community with people with their own cultural background.”
Slaughter has built trust in the community. Through this collaboration, Bird Alliance of Oregon has started to build that trust for its own organization as well.
“It has taken years of community and trust building to get to the point where we authentically host events specifically for people of color, due to POCO and other organizations,” Pinkowitz said. “It’s very meaningful to be in a safe community, speaking from personal experience and as a practitioner. That diversity is very powerful.”
Year-round birding
Through the partnership with Bird Alliance of Oregon, POCO is training the next generation of birders. Young people join a two-year training program to be birdwatch leaders. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife help with this.
Camelia Zollars is the public programs and partnerships specialist with Bird Alliance of Oregon. She spends time in the field with POCO as birding activities grow.
“We bird year-round,” Zollars said. “This summer was really fun. Every summer for the last three years, we have bird days in June, July and August. We make them more out of the box than a typical bird walk.”
This year, POCO and Bird Alliance of Oregon partnered with Leach Botanical Garden on Juneteenth in outer Southeast Portland for a special after-hours event.
“Usually, birding in public — we encounter other people out and about,” Zollars said. “Together, we experienced a place as VIPs. There were almost 20 people, many first timers to POCO and birding. There’s a tree canopy where you can walk at mid-level. We were able to see a brown creeper without binoculars, on a tree trunk. They are the same color as the tree trunk with a bright white chest. We collectively got to see and appreciate this one bird.”
A POCO guide in training got to co-lead this event. The cohort of six will finish a year of training in September, ready to lead outings on their own. The intention with the birding cohort is for as many as possible to lead for at least a year with Guardians or bird outings.
POCO and Bird Alliance of Oregon reach beyond outings and birding groups.
Bird Alliance of Oregon recently purchased 12.5 acres in Northeast Portland, on Northeast 82nd Avenue near Siskiyou Street, to build a wildlife care hospital and nature park. The site is a brown field and a former landfill that has been capped with soil. Some restoration has begun.
Bird Alliance of Oregon’s Southwest Portland location is home to one of the oldest animal hospitals in Oregon. Veterinarians treated about 5,000 animals there in the last year. But those buildings are old and the organization has grown beyond capacity, so when the new site opens they will be able to treat more birds and other animals and release them to the wild.
“It’s really exciting to have a future site in east Portland, because lots of people in POCO live there and Pam is on our Board,” Pinkowitz said. “POCO will be a partner in imagining what this could be.”
Outdoor adventures and highlights
“We went to the Wallowas last year,” Slaughter said. “And we’ll be back again in September. It’s a different kind of beauty. In 2021, they opened the Blue Mountains Trail that a lot of people still don’t know about. We were invited out by the Hells Canyon Council. They wanted to raise awareness among the BIPOC community that Eastern Oregon is a place to visit too, and the Wallowas and the Blue Mountains are wonderful.”
The group has enjoyed camping in Prineville and at Cottonwood Canyon. That part of the state is also great for stargazing.
“Dark sky places are for people to look at the stars at night,” Slaughter said. “The more you offer, the more you help people find their sweet spot. Not everyone wants to or can hike. Some people can definitely drive to a dark sky place and look at the stars and start to understand and know these constellations and get into that. It doesn’t matter what shape they’re in or their abilities — it brings them peace. It brings them joy.”
Various kinds of fishing are additional areas of interest. POCO is planning to work with steelheaders in 2026.
POCO builds a presence outdoors
Slaughter remembers an outing on the Washington side of the gorge at Catherine Creek earlier this summer. The city of Portland provided transportation.
“But the van was pulled over by the sheriff in Washington, asking where they were going,” Slaughter said. “He had been following and said they went 40 miles per hour in a 35 mile per hour zone and too slow in a 50 mile per hour zone. He said they needed to go the speed limit.”
The sheriff asked why they were going to the Bridge of the Gods. The group felt like they were stopped and asked intrusive questions because he thought they didn’t look like they belonged.
“It made us feel we need to go there more and normalize our presence,” Slaughter said. “We have had three outings on the Washington side of the gorge. The others were outstanding.”
POCO members will go to the Hood River area next month for painting and hiking. Membership continues to grow while partnerships form and more outings are added to the calendar.
“Everyone benefits when we’re outdoors — and it is for us,” Slaughter said.
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This article appears in August 20, 2025.