I JUST RETURNED from visiting my parents and family in west central Iowa. Looking out the window as we slowed for our decent into Des Moines, I could see below me a checkerboard of golden fields outlined in green. Usually in the fall, you don’t see such vibrant green colors of grasses, just the various shades of golden corn and soybean fields ready for harvesting.
My hometown is the small town of Coon Rapids, population 1,200. Downtown hasn’t changed much in the past 100 years. There are a number of new homes with the owners commuting to jobs in larger communities. All but one of the car dealerships are gone, along with a number of farm machinery dealers. In many ways it is a typical rural community except for its multi-million dollar school athletic facilities—track; swimming pool; football, baseball, soccer, softball fields; electronic scoreboards; press boxes; concession stands and more. Kids who participate in multiple sports often practice nearly every day. Several years ago the football program had to switch to 8-player teams because of low student participation and have to travel further for games.
I watched my eighth grade nephew play quarterback in a junior varsity football game. He is really good and has a great arm. As the game progressed, I looked out over the vast, modern athletic facilities and thought of the investment per player. If only school boards would invest as much in academics and environmental education programs! Or, perhaps add Chinese to the foreign language program. Can you imagine what a fluency in Chinese would mean to graduates when looking for careers?
It’s no wonder Richard Louv refers to today’s youth as having "nature deficit disorder". Kids are playing outside less. Unstructured outdoor activity is down by half from the previous generation, says Playing For Keeps, a non-profit group that promotes constructive play. Visits to national parks peaked in 1987 and have been falling since then.
Children in the USA average just 30 minutes a week of unregulated time outdoors, says Oliver Pergams, a conservation scientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. At the same time, he says, the amount of media time for all ages has surged from 1,539 hours spent on TV, movies, video games and the Internet in 1988 to 2,226 last year. That's six hours a day.
Children's average weekly electronic-media exposure is almost 45 hours, according to a 2005 report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit group that studies health policy. It found that 68% have TVs in their rooms and half live in homes where a TV is on most or all of the time.
Pergams uses the term "videophilia" to reflect the increased use of electronic media and its negative physical and psychological effects, which he says includes obesity, depression and attention problems. Outdoor activities reduce attention deficit and hyperactivity symptoms in children, according to a 2004 study by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
"When you're outside playing, you pick up all sorts of things," such as depth perception, says Leslie Owen Wilson, a professor of education at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. She says kids who are "nature smart" have keen sensory skills, care about animals and plants and notice things in the environment others often miss.
In his book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder, Richard Louv reports a growing concern of parents, educators and physicians: Children aren't playing outside much anymore — not even in the back garden or the neighborhood park. This change in our relationship with nature has profound implications for the mental, physical and spiritual health of future generations.
Not everyone accepts nature deficit as inevitable. Conservation organizations, communities, teachers and individuals are developing programs and initiatives to reconnect children with nature. Since the book’s publication, Louv and others have come to believe in the great potential for an international "Leave No Child Inside" campaign focused on education, urban design, architecture, conservation, and many other disciplines. See Children & Nature Network View Video and learn what you can do.
Tom Patrick
President
WindStar Wildlife Institute
In this eloquent and comprehensive work, Louv makes a convincing case for ensuring that children (and adults) maintain access to pristine natural areas, and even, when those are not available, any bit of nature that we can preserve, such as vacant lots. I agree with him 100%. Just as we never really outgrow our need for our parents (and grandparents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, etc.), humanity has never outgrown, and can never outgrow, our need for the companionship and mutual benefits of other species.
But what strikes me most about this book is how Louv is able, in spite of 310 pages of text, to completely ignore the two most obvious problems with his thesis:
(1) We want and need to have contact with other species, but neither we nor Louv bother to ask whether they want to have contact with us! In fact, most species of wildlife obviously do not like having humans around, and can thrive only if we leave them alone! Or they are able tolerate our presence, but only within certain limits.
(2) We and Louv never ask what type of contact is appropriate! He includes fishing, hunting, building "forts", farming, ranching, and all other manner of recreation. Clearly, not all contact with nature leads to someone becoming an advocate and protector of wildlife. While one kid may see a beautiful area and decide to protect it, what's to stop another from seeing it and thinking of it as a great place to build a house or create a ski resort? Developers and industrialists must come from somewhere, and they no doubt played in the woods with the future environmentalists!
It is obvious, and not a particularly new idea, that we must experience wilderness in order to appreciate it. But it is equally true, though ("conveniently") never mentioned, that we need to stay out of nature, if the wildlife that live there are to survive. I discuss this issue thoroughly in the essay, "Wildlife Need Habitat Off-Limits to Humans!", at http://home.pacbell.net/mjvande/india3.
It should also be obvious (but apparently isn't) that how we interact with nature determines how we think about it and how we learn to treat it. Remember, children don't learn so much what we tell them, but they learn very well what they see us do. Fishing, building "forts", mountain biking, and even berry-picking teach us that nature exists for us to exploit. Luckily, my fort-building career was cut short by a bee-sting! As I was about to cut down a tree to lay a third layer of logs on my little log cabin in the woods, I took one swing at the trunk with my axe, and immediately got a painful sting (there must have been a bee-hive in the tree) and ran away as fast as I could.
On page 144 Louv quotes Rasheed Salahuddin: "Nature has been taken over by thugs who care absolutely nothing about it. We need to take nature back." Then he titles his next chapter "Where Will Future Stewards of Nature Come From?" Where indeed?
While fishing may bring one into contact with natural beauty, that message can be eclipsed by the more salient one that the fish exist to pleasure and feed humans (even if we release them after we catch them). (My fishing career was also short-lived, perhaps because I spent most of the time either waiting for fish that never came, or untangling fishing line.)
Mountain bikers claim that they are "nature-lovers" and are "just hikers on wheels". But if you watch one of their helmet-camera videos, it is easy to see that 99.44% of their attention must be devoted to controlling their bike, or they will crash. Children initiated into mountain biking may learn to identify a plant or two, but by far the strongest message they will receive is that the rough treatment of nature is acceptable. It's not!
On page 184 Louv recommends that kids carry cell phones. First of all, cell phones transmit on essentially the same frequency as a microwave oven, and are therefore hazardous to one's health –- especially for children, whose skulls are still relatively thin. Second, there is nothing that will spoil one's experience of nature faster than something that reminds one of the city and the "civilized" world. The last thing one wants while enjoying nature is to be reminded of the world outside. Nothing will ruin a hike or a picnic faster than hearing a radio or the ring of a cell phone, or seeing a headset, cell phone, or mountain bike. I've been enjoying nature for over 60 years, and can't remember a single time when I felt a need for any of these items.
It's clear that we humans need to reduce our impacts on wildlife, if they, and hence we, are to survive. But it is repugnant and arguably inhumane to restrict human access to nature. Therefore, we need to practice minimal-impact recreation (i.e., hiking only), and leave our technology (if we need it at all!) at home. In other words, we need to decrease the quantity of contact with nature, and increase the quality.
References:
Ehrlich, Paul R. and Ehrlich, Anne H., Extinction: The Causes and Consequences of the Disappearances of Species. New York: Random House, 1981.
Errington, Paul L., A Question of Values. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1987.
Flannery, Tim, The Eternal Frontier -- An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples. New York: Grove Press, 2001.
Foreman, Dave, Confessions of an Eco-Warrior. New York: Harmony Books, 1991.
Knight, Richard L. and Kevin J. Gutzwiller, eds. Wildlife and Recreationists. Covelo, California: Island Press, 1995.
Noss, Reed F. and Allen Y. Cooperrider, Saving Nature's Legacy: Protecting and Restoring Biodiversity. Island Press, Covelo, California, 1994.
Stone, Christopher D., Should Trees Have Standing? Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects. Los Altos, California: William Kaufmann, Inc., 1973.
Vandeman, Michael J., http://home.pacbell.net/mjvande, especially http://home.pacbell.net/mjvande/ecocity3, http://home.pacbell.net/mjvande/india3, http://home.pacbell.net/mjvande/sc8, and http://home.pacbell.net/mjvande/goodall.
Ward, Peter Douglas, The End of Evolution: On Mass Extinctions and the Preservation of Biodiversity. New York: Bantam Books, 1994.
"The Wildlands Project", Wild Earth. Richmond, Vermont: The Cenozoic Society, 1994.
Wilson, Edward O., The Future of Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.
Abstract:
It is anthropocentric thinking, and irresponsible, to promote the invasion of wildlife habitat without considering:
(1) We want and need to have contact with other species, but neither we nor Louv bother to ask whether they want to have contact with us! In fact, most species of wildlife obviously do not like having humans around, and can thrive only if we leave them alone! Or they are able tolerate our presence, but only within certain limits.
(2) We and Louv never ask what type of contact is appropriate! He includes fishing, hunting, building "forts", farming, ranching, and all other manner of recreation. Clearly, not all contact with nature leads to someone becoming an advocate and protector of wildlife. While one kid may see a beautiful area and decide to protect it, what's to stop another from seeing it and thinking of it as a great place to build a house or create a ski resort? Developers and industrialists must come from somewhere, and they no doubt played in the woods with the future environmentalists!
Michael J. Vandeman, Ph.D.
Posted by: Mike Vandeman | October 02, 2007 at 04:32 AM
If you consider current trends in development, you can conclude that there will be no improvement in the incident of NDD. In Central Oregon houses are built so close together, and nearly all vegetation removed, that there is no "outdoors" left for the kids to explore. No provisions are made for neighborhood parks or grassy areas where you can even be "outdoors".
Development is solely to squeeze as many houses as you can into the forest you have just removed. Another case of the all mighty dollar ruling our existence.
I don’t believe planners and developers care about the consequences of their decisions.
I’m beginning to doubt that there is any hope for change for the better.
Posted by: Dennis | November 09, 2007 at 11:53 PM
Dr. Vandeman:
I am confused by your posting.
It would seem that you disagree with Richard Louv regarding a child's interaction with other species. A child picks up a frog or a turtle and is mesmerized by the experience? How could one find the absolute wonder of a child experiencing another species objectionable? Butterfly? Earthworm? Ant Lion? I find it absurd that you think that a child's exploration of the animal/insect/amphibian world is in some way damaging to those creatures. I suggest to you that every wild creature on this planet is better off for having a child pick it up and examine it. As is every tree fortunate for having it's leaf examined and admired by a child. Therein lies the future...and quite frankly, our only hope for a future.
You seemed to have missed the entire point of Richard Louv's book. (I read the book and attended one of his lectures.) His point is that we are depriving our children of the experience of unsupervised adventure in the woods. We, as a society, are not allowing our children to go experience the wonders of nature..on their own. The exploration and the discovery of things that lack power cords. And, most importantly, the health and well-being of our children is suffering from this deprivation.
Fortunately the overwhelming majority of nature educators agree with Richard Louv and have adjusted their programs to allow children to explore independently...and learn to appreciate the beauty and wonder that is their heritage.
Posted by: Jack Lewnes | November 13, 2007 at 09:46 PM