NatureBridge Environmental Science Programs

NatureBridge Environmental Science Programs offers overnight, hands-on environmental science programs that take place as multi-day, immersive experiences in outdoor classrooms in national parks. The program includes backpacking programs, summer day camps, retreats and conferences where participants explore the outdoors, including activities such as exploring Rodeo Beach and the trails of the Headlands, with a focus on environmental science education and experiential learning.

• Ages: 9–18 years old
• Schedule: Multi-day, immersive programs

NatureBridge’s mission is to connect young people to the wonder and science of the natural world, igniting self-discovery and inspiring stewardship of the planet. The organization offers multi-day, immersive programs for students in grades 4–12 and is the largest overnight environmental education partner of the National Park Service. NatureBridge is also described as the largest education partner of the National Park Service and takes more than 30,000 students each year into national parks.

NatureBridge began in 1971 when high school teacher Don Rees assembled 50 high school students in Yosemite for a week-long adventure that led to the founding of Yosemite Institute, which later became NatureBridge. Yosemite Institute was formed in 1971, Headlands Institute was founded in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in 1977, and the name changed to Yosemite National Institutes in 1984. Olympic Park Institute opened in Olympic National Park in Washington state in 1987, and in 2009 Yosemite National Institutes officially became NatureBridge. In 2010, NatureBridge’s first campus in Southern California opened in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area and Channel Islands National Park, and in 2012 its first East Coast campus opened in Prince William Forest Park in Virginia. Construction on the National Environmental Science Center, NatureBridge’s new campus in Yosemite, began in 2013, and in 2016 President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama visited with a group of NatureBridge 4th graders in Yosemite during the National Park Service Centennial. In 2017, NatureBridge was awarded $3.5 million from the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, and in 2024 the National Environmental Science Center in Yosemite opened to students for the first time. Early leadership included Don Rees as the first Executive Director of Yosemite Institute and Jack Walston as the first Board Chair of Yosemite Institute.

NatureBridge partners with the National Park Service to provide 30,000 students from over 700 schools access to national parks for discovery, investigation and learning each year. It partners with the Outdoor Education Institute to train NatureBridge staff through an outdoor professional and workforce development program. NatureBridge acknowledges that its programs take place in the ancestral homelands of Tribes, Bands and First Nations at its locations, including the Klallam/S'Klallam, Makah, Quinault, Quileute, Skokomish, Hoh and Queets tribes at Olympic; the Mono Lake Kutzadikaa Tribe, Bishop Paiute Tribe, Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation, Picayune Rancheria of Chukchansi Indians, Bridgeport Indian Colony, North Fork Rancheria of Mono Indians of California and the Tuolumne Band of Me-Wuk Indians at Yosemite; the Coast Miwok, Graton Rancheria and Ohlone people at Golden Gate; and the Doeg/Monacan, Patawomeck and the Piscataway at Prince William.

NatureBridge’s campuses are located in Yosemite National Park, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Olympic National Park, and Prince William Forest Park. The Golden Gate campus lies just north of the Golden Gate Bridge in the Marin Headlands on traditional and unceded territory of the Coast Miwok, Ohlone and Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. The Olympic National Park location features three distinct ecosystems—alpine ridges, temperate rainforest and rugged coastline—and includes a campus on the shore of glacially carved Lake Crescent. Yosemite National Park is home to the flagship campus of NatureBridge, originally known as the Yosemite Institute. Prince William Forest Park is the largest green space in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, and NatureBridge’s campus there is located at Cabin Camp One, a former Recreational Development Area built in 1935.

NatureBridge’s Educator Development Program aims to increase the representation of those who have had historical and systemic barriers to the field of outdoor education and environmentalism. Its core values are stated as: “We bring our best self; We learn, teach and grow; We are inclusive; We build open and honest relationships.”

Last updated August 15, 2026.