PEEC to host free Earth Day Festival at Los Alamos Nature Center

A free Earth Day festival at the Los Alamos Nature Center will give residents a chance to turn environmental concerns into practical action, with hands-on activities, food, entertainment, local makers and community organizations all in one place.

The Pajarito Environmental Education Center will host the event Saturday, April 18, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 2600 Canyon Road. PEEC describes the festival as family-friendly and built around exploring, playing, learning and celebrating, a format that fits a town where wildfire preparedness, forest health, water and backyard sustainability are part of daily conversation.

That setting matters. The Los Alamos Nature Center is an award-winning building operated by PEEC, and the nonprofit says it reaches about 40,000 adults and children a year through the nature center, public programs, school lessons, field trips, hikes, outings, classes and its planetarium. The building itself was funded through Capital Improvement Project dollars approved by Los Alamos County voters in 2012.

Inside and outside, the Nature Center is designed as more than a classroom. Visitors can browse demonstration gardens, spend time in the nature play area, learn about local plants and animals, study the 3-D topo map and pick up a Passport to the Pajarito Plateau. Those features make the site a fitting home for an Earth Day event that can connect local families to the land around them, not just to a calendar observance.

Earth Day was founded in 1970 by Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson and is officially observed on April 22. In Los Alamos, PEEC has built its own Earth Day tradition over years of observances, including a 2025 festival that featured a green ribbon cutting and the reading of the Los Alamos County Earth Day proclamation.

The April 18 festival will also sit within a full week of PEEC programming, including planetarium shows and Nature at Night events. For a community that lives close to the forest edge, the watershed and the mesas, the festival will offer a timely reminder that environmental education is not abstract. It is tied to what residents see outside their doors and what they may need to protect next.