Sending kids outdoors: a dose of nature may protect against health and environmental threats (#1)

July 21, 2:40 PMMadison Nature Travel ExaminerCandice Gaukel Andrews

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It used to be that being a kid just went with being outdoors. Remember how hard it was to wait for summer vacation, when you could be free from the four school walls that surrounded you the other nine, long months of the year? It appears, however, that nature just isn’t as attractive to children as it used to be. And lately, that fact has been getting a lot of attention.

In 2005, Richard Louv wrote a book titled Last Child in the Woods about the “nature-deficit disorder” that afflicts today’s children. It sparked pockets of nature enthusiasts around the country to set up programs encouraging kids to go outside. And according to a more recent study sponsored by The Nature Conservancy, nature recreation around the globe — measured on at least two dozen variables such as national park and national forest visits, camping, hunting, and fishing — declined sharply after the 1990s. An earlier Nature Conservancy study conducted by ecologist Oliver Pergams of the University of Illinois-Chicago and Patricia Zaradic, an ecologist with the Stroud Water Research Center in Pennsylvania, correlated a decline in visits to U.S. National Parks with an increase in television, video game, DVD, and Internet use. According to Pergams and Zaradic, per capita nature recreation peaked between 1981 and 1991. Since then, there has been a decline of about 1.2 percent per year, with a total decline of between 18 and 25 percent.

While the correlation doesn’t necessarily mean that electronic recreation has caused the decrease in children having firsthand experiences in nature, that could be the case (or whatever is causing us to be so engaged in electronic recreation is also causing the decline). As Wisconsin’s Deputy Director Rebecca Smith, who oversees the state’s conservation programs, told me, “Computers are great, but nothing beats the real-life experience of catching your first fish, feeling the mist from a waterfall, hearing a coyote howl, smelling a pine forest, or seeing fireflies light up the sky. These small moments are something no one should miss.”

Some health practitioners make an even more compelling case for giving your children a dose of nature. They say it could help manage symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Over the last decade, ADHD diagnoses have reached epidemic proportions in the United States, and ADHD is the most commonly diagnosed “mental illness” in our children today.

Such studies should make us value places like our state forests and parks all the more. In Wisconsin, the Southern Unit of the Kettle Moraine State Forest, situated close to the state’s most populated centers (Milwaukee and Madison), makes nature experiences, such as camping and hiking, readily accessible for a lot of Wisconsinites.

It’s good to remember that “nature travels” are not only trips to far-off, exotic locales but are sometimes as close as climbing to a high tree branch in your own backyard.

Part 2 of “Sending kids outdoors: a dose of nature may protect against health and environmental threats” will be posted next week.

Looking for places to travel into nature? Check out these stories:

Hemlock Draw, Baraboo Hills

Olbrich Gardens Thai Pavilion and Bolz Conservatory, Madison

Henry Vilas Zoo, Madison

Muir Woods, University of Wisconsin-Madison

For More Info:

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHS)

Leave No Child Inside

Eco-Ethical Issues While Traveling Through Nature

Photo 1 ©John T. Andrews. Photo 2 ©Candice Gaukel Andrews.