His remarks about covenants stirred my blood. My neighborhood has none. It is the most interesting place to walk through you will ever see. Wealthy neighborhoods with covenants are mind-numbing places to walk or drive through, filled with stuffy people trying to out do each other with their status symbols.

Seattle has a policy about tree houses: "Go for it!" I built one for my daughter that is a dusy, a few feet from the city sidewalk in a neighbor's tree (with their permission of course). Their baby will one day put it to use as well.

I disagree in that isolated, sterile green spaces in neighborhoods would fit the bill. The fields and woods I explored were filled with surprises, crayfish, red-bellied snakes, garter snakes, praying mantises, you name it. The city parks filled with trees were of no interest. You have got to have more than just city parks.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2005/7/9/181017/2895


In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

We have lived in New Zealand for the past 3 summers (their winters), and my children and I have been amazed at the beauty of the natural South Island.  The kids ski the Southern Alps, hike hours through native forests to waterfalls where they can drink right from the stream, 4X4ed to hidden valleys full of caves and rare ferns, ridden on boats across huge, clean lakes, taken boat tours on underground stream through glowworm caves, touched stallagtites, fed rare, wild birds like the Kea (the only Alpine parrot in the world, found only on the South Island of New Zealand), and touched strange insects like the large Wetas that live in cave mouths or in the forests.

I say "Good on 'ya, Mate! for encouraging our children to exchange video games for butterflies and T.V. for real, up-close views of plants, birds, mammals, insects, etc.

Keep spreading your wonderful ideas.  I am a cancer survivor, writer, and photographer, and my books all have some type of nature theme (you can check them out on my website at http://www.lonnawilliams.com or type my name in at http://www.amazon.com).

All the best!

Lonna Lisa Williams offers free selections from her books and photos at http://www.lonnawilliams.com

So far, however, these efforts seem to be limited geographically and demographically.  They seem to be limited to places where chunks of forest and/or seashore are available nearby - rural and ex-urban America.  As a result, they mostly serve the economic elite and/or the social majority.  I think some might say, 'well, that is because those are places where nature is,' dismissing the possibility that wild nature can be found in cities.

But wild nature can be found in the city and probably shouldn't be dismissed out of hand as "sterile green places."  Recent studies are showing the importance of any exposure to the wild in kids' emotional and intellectual development.  Francis E. Kuo a social psychologist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has published findings showing that even the mere presence of a tree outside the window of a child living in the ghetto improves self-discipline, behavior, and academic achievement ("Views of Nature and Self-Discipline: Evidence from Inner City Children," Journal of Environmental Psychology 21 (2001)).  I think we should take these kinds of studies seriously and think about ways to put more wild nature all over our urban habitats - street trees, boulevards, flower pots, bird houses, parks and greens, etc. - starting with the inner city.  And we should encourage urban schools to use these urban wilds as their outdoor classrooms.  Every practical exposure to wild nature we can create is going to contribute to the changes we seek.

Peace,
Kip

Most cities have their parks filled with trees. They are shady, but boring places. They just don't cross the necessary threshold for curiousity and discovery needed by young minds.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

And any conscious encounter with the wild, again, so says Henry, brings value, because it lifts the spirit, ennobles the mind, and provides the most delightfully complex referent for one's thoughts and ideas.  "In wildness is the preservation of the world," wrote Thoreau.  Francis Kuo's research supports this idea.  There is much more value in urban nature (and in working very hard to enhance urban nature) than the U.S. environmental movement's 'wilderness' fetish allows.  And it doesn't diminish wilderness one iota to recognize that fact.

Peace,
Kip

I don't think we have a genetic propensity for biophilia as E.O. Wilson wants to believe.

I think a love for nature is largely a result of early childhood imprinting. Most kids go through a "bug" phase if given the opportunity to see bugs. There is nothing more interesting than a bug when you are three or four. But most outgrow the fascination and that is the end of that. Some of us never do. Maybe we are anomalies. Maybe our brains are hypersensitive to discovery and diversity.

It is similar to the music you learn to like. If a parent loves Elvis, or classical, and plays this music consistently as their children grow up, odds are real high that their children will learn to love the same music. When I had a father, he was always dragging home animals to show us. Usually baby animals displaced by his bulldozers. Maybe I was imprinted.

How important is it that people love nature? I honestly don't know. I wish more people did, to help promote my desire to save it. Humanity is destroying the biodiversity of the planet. Will it hasten our own demise? I actually doubt it. Destroying nature may actually allow us to hang in there even longer. A world of stripped bare of biodiversity, leaving only people, their pet cats and dogs--shiver.

Life is mostly a power struggle. If nature is going to be saved, as happened with the end of slavery and the beginning of the civil rights movement, it will have to be forced down the throats of those who stand to gain short term profit from its destruction because that is human nature. Wilson got that part right in his book on human nature.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

Louv and Biodiv are rather grim about what wrongs we have done to our urban children.  My feeling is, visiting the green areas of cities regularly and often, and visiting wilder areas outside of cities also regularly if less often, is not a bad way of starting a young person out on understanding life on earth.

It is a big ethical question, anyway, to what extent a parent ought to inculcate his/her values into a child.  That is never going to be absolutely possible.  In countless ways we can suggest to our children the things that are important and valuable to us.  Let us not underestimate their intelligence.  A smart, thoughtful parent will be able to get across to his children why he wishes that they all live in a city, on the one hand, and why he loves, say, the Porcupine caribou herd, on the other.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

...our urban parks and botanical gardens have nothing to teach or inspire kids about nature.

Those are not my words. You have also confused my opinions with Louv's.

It is my opinion (not Louv's) that urban parks and gardens have "little" to teach or inspire kids about nature. The word "nothing" makes its first appearance with your comment above. Like most everything else in life, it's a matter of degree. My take would be to improve on access to nature, yours I believe is that existing city parks and gardens are adequate.

Louv and Biodiv are rather grim about what wrongs we have done to our urban children

Again, it is Louv, not me, promoting the idea that our children are suffering from nature deficiency.

It is a big ethical question, anyway, to what extent a parent ought to inculcate his/her values into a child.

Exposing children to nature, letting their natural propensity for curiosity and wonder to take it from there, is a far cry from inculcating them. The word "inculcate" would be more appropriate to describe, say... what is happening in many of America's home schools, which also double as religious indoctrination camps.

As for rats in subways, Louv makes a good point in that imprinting can go both ways. I could see how kids exposed only to disease carrying sewer rats and cereal boxes full of cockroaches could  develop an aversion to nature. I wrote a piece last summer about a visit to one of Seattle's best urban parks. The signs warning us to stay away from the water were not necessary--the garbage floating in it combined with the stench was enough. Similarly, cemeteries, although filled with trees and flowers, might not be the best places to teach children about nature.


In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

I have no doubt that Richard Louv's book will prove invaluable as an educational aid in dealing with the modern malais of disconnected youth - he is spot on - even to recognizing the problem of the litigous society we have created.

A bicycle helmet might very well be an essential investment in our physical health, but reconnecting with nature is an essential investment in our spiritual health too - far more important, in my view.

Much of my youth was spent in prayer and history classes - neither of which benefited my spirit to anywhere near the degree of reconnecting with nature...  and many children in our society are now  unfortunately excluded from an association with their grandparents.

I think Naomi's comments are very sad - and can but hope that they do not preclude too many children from the benefits of reconnecting with nature.

An Actively Green Grandmother from Oz.

Also, it is an often-reported anecdotal experience of many urban children, that when they are taken to some sort of state park, far from the city, on a field trip, their greatest impression is how horrible the biting and stinging insects are, and how they wish to return to the city, where there are no such insects, and never to go back to that dumb old park ever again.  That is anecdotal, mind you, but I can assure you, I have heard kids say things like that.  Unfortunately, that should be held against the teachers, for their ill-preparedness in warning and defending their young charges.

So I allow, after all, that you are right, in mistrusting the environmental sympathies of children raised in cities.  I was initially defending a rather well-educated class of parents, who understood their responsibility to be to give their kids a balanced education.  I did not say "city parks and gardens are adequate" for that purpose, but they are most certainly a good part of a start.  Nevertheless, I agree with you, there is not nearly enough in the experiences of very many of our urban children to encourage them to value wilderness and biodiversity.

What is called for, clearly, is NOT anti-Eastern, anti-urban contempt on the part of environmentalists from "better places."  What is called for is more well-designed green spaces in old cities; and much better environmental education of our children.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Roaches are ubiquitous, especially in warmer climates and lower economic brackets. I kept roaches in jars on occasion--the ones the size of a man's thumb that would fly across the room at night during breeding season. My mom indulged me any way she could, letting me keep anything I wanted for a pet--except poisonous snakes.


In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

Fred Goodwin
Boy Scout volunteer
San Antonio, TX

--
National Episcopal Scouters Association
http://www.episcopal-scouting.org/

In his view, Scouting has lost its outdoor focus and is trying to be all things to all people (he says this more with respect to Girl Scouts, but he says BSA suffers from some of the same lack of focus).

To some extent, I think we have forgotten the "outing" in Scouting.  But it varies by Troop and Pack.  My son's Troop goes camping every month, but I don't know that such camping leads to the same sense of the wonder of the outdoors that I got as a kid by just wandering, unsupervised, in the woods.

--
National Episcopal Scouters Association
http://www.episcopal-scouting.org/