To treat “Nature Deficit” in children…and adults…and uh, city council members?
The New York Times had a nice op-ed this weekend from Nikolas Kristof talking about the lack of experience most children have with the outside world these days. They are so plugged in and scheduled morning to evening that there is no more time for catching newts in the creek for digging for worms.
All this comes to mind because for most of us in the industrialized world, nature is a rarer and rarer part of our lives. Children for 1,000 generations grew up exploring fields, itching with poison oak and discovering the hard way what a wasp nest looks like. That’s no longer true.
Paul, a fourth grader in San Diego, put it this way: “I like to play indoors better, ’cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are.” Paul was quoted in a thoughtful book by Richard Louv, “Last Child in the Woods,” that argued that baby boomers “may constitute the last generation of Americans to share an intimate, familial attachment to the land and water.”
Only 2 percent of American households now live on farms, compared with 40 percent in 1900. Suburban childhood that once meant catching snakes in fields now means sanitized video play dates scheduled a week in advance. One study of three generations of 9-year-olds found that by 1990 the radius from the house in which they were allowed to roam freely was only one-ninth as great as it had been in 1970.
A British study found that children could more easily identify Japanese cartoon characters like Pikachu, Metapod and Wigglytuff than they could native animals and plants, like otter, oak and beetle.
Mr. Louv calls this “nature deficit disorder,” and he links it to increases in depression, obesity and attention deficit disorder. I don’t know about all that, although his book does cite a study indicating that watching fish lowers blood pressure significantly. (That’s how to cut health costs: hand out goldfish instead of heart medicine!)
If watching fish swimming in a tank in your lowers blood pressure, what do you think watching beavers swimming in a creek in your urban stream does for it? What happens to the nature IQ of all those children whose illustrations graced our tiles at the festival, or who felt the feather display at Native Birds Connections? Or were reminded what poison oak looks like by the Native Plant display? Or darted ahead to search the creek for the mink on the beaver tour? Martinez must have a lower incidence of NDD because of the remarkable habitat and involvement we created.
One problem may be that the American environmental movement has focused so much on preserving nature that it has neglected to do enough to preserve a constituency for nature. It’s important not only to save forests, but also to promote camping, hiking, bouldering and white-water rafting so that people care about saving those forests.
I don’t know about that. I hear a lot about involving the younger generation. I’ll be giving a presentation on beavers tomorrow at the John Muir Mountain Camp, but what about the Audubon group that teachers teachers how to educate children about birds? (ANTS) What about the the Creek Seekers Poetry Contest and the ten children reading their nature poetry? What about Rona Zollinger’s ESA class and the great work it does? What about the donation from Safari West specifically for educating children in the community? What about REI grants for nature education?
Don’t blame it on the environmental movement. If the beavers are any indication, I’m going to guess that they’re working hard as they can to spread the gospel to the younger generation but their attention sometimes gets demanded elsewhere when, say, large corporations threaten massive forests or large property owners demand that sheetpile gets installed through lodges. We’re dancing as fast as we can!
You know one of the delightful things about my senatorial meeting with Susan Junfish (Parents for a Safer Environment) was when we were talking about not using pesticides near the schools, and the senator’s aid said casually “oh but there are advocacy groups that can watch that” and Susan championed, “We shouldn’t HAVE to do that! There are people who are paid to do this, and they should read the research, pay attention and do their jobs. We should get to drive our kids to soccer and be home with our families!”
Go Susan!
As a child psychologist with a windowed wall of bird feeders I can say with certainty that children are not born with NDD. It is an acquired condition. When I take kids out with me to fill the feeders, or see a deer on the hill, or count the turkeys on the roof, not one of their wide eyes are busy looking for an outlet.
Yesterday I was contacted by Dave Egbert of Living Green Radio. He wants to do an interview about the beavers and their role in the creek and our role in caring for them. It’s aired nationally and accessible on line so if you’re around at 7 am on August 15 you should definitely tune in. I know you all know the story by heart, but sometimes its fun to hear stories you have lived through retold by someone else!
Oh and Sunday was the 600th post on this website. Happy Postiversary!
You may have heard something about the successful re-release of 
