The reprint at the end of this blog suggests that environmental organizations are worried because visitorship to national parks is falling precipitously. They fear a loss of future envrionmentalists.
The reprint raises, for me, the question "Why do people take an interest in the natural world, in the first place?" The environmental world won't like my social thought answer.
Nature
in America is conceived as beautiful because it is chaotic, random and
untouched by humans. The basis for respecting nature is the awesome
power it has to easily and without apparent moral qualms, destroy
humans.
Other societies don't have the same view of nature. A natural Japanese garden is well organized and even the appearance of random leaves is a human creation. This well organized idea of natural is the source of Japanese love of nature. The fear of tsunomis and typhoons is not associated with love or beauty.
What evokes the "beauty
of nature" in Americans is not parks or mountains with climbers on
them...it is roadless uninhabited areas with dangerous man eating
animals.
If the enviro's want more Americans to love nature and presumably appreciate the environment, they need to support more outdoor adventures, more survival training and particularly more dangerous outdoor adventures. Parks schmarks; love of nature in America has nothing to do with parks.
Click to see reprint.
Conservationists Struggle To Pull Kids Away From TV
Environmental groups and conservationists are trying
to reverse young Americans' reluctance to venture outdoors -- before it
hurts their membership numbers. The Economist reports that the
reluctance is part of a broader drop in visits to America's national
parks and other famed nature spots. Overnight stays in national parks
such as Yosemite Valley in California and Yellowstone National Park
fell 20% between 1995 and 2005.
Fewer outdoor adventures mean fewer awe-inspiring childhood experiences of nature, which have long been recognized by environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club as the main reason that people join them, the Economist reports.
"There won't be a conservation movement 30 years from
now if there's no love for nature," says Kevin Coyle, a vice president
for the National Wildlife Federation.
As a result, environmental groups are expanding programs to drag kids away from their videogames and into nature. "We don't need to be giving them propaganda about offshore oil drilling, not when they're 13 years old," says the Sierra Club's Martin LeBlanc. "We just need to get them outside." Mr. LeBlanc manages 65 programs to get kids from the inner cities out into nature.