Reprinted from a Febr 24, 2008 column in the Morgantown Dominion Post
Years ago, when I was a kid, grandad would take us to the woods every Sunday after church. My brothers and I, and sometimes a few friends, really looked forward to those walks and grandad taught us how to identify animal tracks, mushrooms and birds. Then at age ten, dad took us along on his deer scouting trips to the woods. We’d see deer, squirrels, turkeys, etc., and loved getting into the woods.
At age twelve, we started squirrel hunting and bow hunting for deer. That led to an interest in studying wildlife and led to both my twin brother and I serving as wildlife professors at major universities. Along with that came many valuable lessons; learning patience, appreciating the need for an unpolluted environment, valuing our wildlife, understanding ecosystems, gaining self confidence, becoming more spiritual . . . the list goes on and on.
I think about that a lot the past three months as a surgery procedure I had when awry and I’m now not able to get to the woods. Golly do I miss that.
OK, I hear you, especially the non hunters in the audience who are saying . . . "there he goes again, rattling on about the values of hunting. I don’t hunt, so what is the point here?" The gist of this column goes way beyond hunting and the ramifications for all of society are down right scary. A new research paper published in the National Academy of Science shows that we’re totally losing our relationship to the outdoors.
Researchers looked at visitation rates to National Parks, hunting and fishing licenses sold, time spent camping, and time spent hiking or back packing. All of these increased for fifty years until the period between 1981 and 1991 when all the above started to decrease. And the decrease is substantial at 1-3 % per year.
Take visiting U. S. National Parks. Such visiting rates increased every year from 1930 to 1987. They’ve been decreasing ever since. It doesn’t take a surgeon (uh oh, bad example) . . . it doesn’t take a wildlife professor to figure out what will happen to camping or hiking or back packing if numbers drop 1-3 percent a year.
The authors of this study point out research showing "that the environmentally responsible behavior results from direct contact with the environment." They cite other research that shows that "people must be exposed to natural areas as children if they are to care about them as adults." Since adults act as role models for children, if adults don’t go to the woods for outdoor recreation, their kids won’t either. Not good.
Here are some of the variables they studied that are down every year; # of people who camped the last year, # of visits to all state parks, # of people who went backpacking or hiking anywhere the last year, # of people who camped in state parks or forests the past year, the total number of visits to all National Parks, the number of people who hiked in National Forests or National Parks, etc., etc. The trends are more than trends. There are no exceptions. Everything is down.
The authors note that camping is done by one in five Americans, making it the most popular of all the above forms of outdoor recreation. Yet, important as it is, it’s been decreasing every year.
Several weeks ago I presented information relative to why young people don’t hunt or fish. They spend six ½ hours a day watching television, computers, or video games. There is a most interesting book on "nature deficit disorder" and I believe that is where I read a survey where they asked kids why they didn’t go outdoors to camp, hike, hunt, etc. One boy said he didn’t go outside because there were no electrical outlets there. That says it all and here is why I think this is so scary.
We are now "growing" an entire society that has nature-deficit disorder . . . a disease where fewer and fewer people relate to the outdoors and nature. Will they be able to relate and even care about; the loss of fresh water, the loss of deer habitat, the decline in some bird species, global warming, the increase in air pollution, acid rain, saving wetlands, the loss of revenues to manage wildlife that comes with the loss of hunting, etc., etc.? The list of things that are so important to our very existence goes on and on, while our young people play video games and watch television.
If that doesn’t scare you, then you need to get outdoors and see what we are going to lose if we don’t get kids away from the boob tubes. I don’t mean to eliminate all the good educational things that are available on television and on the Internet. I mean that it’s time to get kids and adults away from the mind driveling junk that clutters the media and creates this new disease called "nature deficit disorder."
