Source: Cornell University ( http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/March06/wild.nature.play.ssl.html )

Posted: March 13, 2006

The findings will be published in the next issue of Children, Youth and Environment (Vol. 16:1).

Many of you have read Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature Deficit Disorder (Algonquin Press Books of Chapel Hill, 2005). In this book, Mr. Louv argues that children who interact with nature are less prone to “such maladies as depression, obesity, and attention-deficit disorder,” while environment-based education can foster critical thinking skills and boost test scores.

A study that was published by Cornell researchers this past spring corroborates the importance of early childhood experiences with nature. Both Louv and the study’s authors (Nancy Wells and Kristi Lekies) emphasize the importance of unfettered play and “wild” nature activities, such as camping, hiking, walking, fishing, hunting, and “playing in the woods,” and engaging in such activities as building forts and tree houses.

Other studies have taken the approach of looking for the effects of specific early childhood experiences in shaping the attitudes of an adult environmentalist. Wells and Lekies took a different approach: they looked at childhood experiences of a broad representative sample of urban adults to discover what early childhood experiences are predictors of positive attitudes toward the environment.

“Our study indicates that participating in wild nature activities before age 11 is a particularly potent pathway toward shaping both environmental attitudes and behaviors in adulthood. When children become truly engaged with the natural world at a young age, the experience is likely to stay with them in a powerful way -- shaping their subsequent environmental path," said Wells.

Importantly, participating in scouts or structured environmental education programs had no effect on adult attitudes toward the environment. "Participating in nature-related activities that are mandatory evidently do not have the same effects as free play in nature, which don't have demands or distractions posed by others and may be particularly critical in influencing long-term environmentalism," Wells said.

This is not to say that education about the environment is not important – for all the reasons outlined in the first paragraph. But we also need to consider how we can create the types of experiences that will help us achieve our vision that every resident and visitor will understand, appreciate, and take care of Southern Nevada’s environment. For example, the design of a new visitor center should include spaces for children to engage in “free-play” with nature-related phenomena. Should we consider the validity of staged experiences, such as the manufacture of a realistic desert wash, complete with animal tracks, burrows, and plants, that allows children to “freely” explore and discover the desert and its denizens? What about an outdoor space in which children can muck around with, say, cargo-netting or tarps, creating tents and forts? These are questions and topics worth exploring and advocating.