Kids -- and adults -- these days are "videophiliacs" who prefer their nature through the TV screen rather than personally experienced, says a new study estimating that U.S. folks' participation in outdoor recreation has dropped as much as 25 percent over the past 20 years. Researchers looked at four metrics: visitation to public lands, number of fishing and hunting licenses issued, time spent camping, and time spent backpacking and hiking. Only day hiking has increased since the mid-1980s, and just slightly. "We were surprised by the results, and in some sense, quite frightened," says Patricia Zaradic, coauthor of the research, which was funded by the Nature Conservancy and published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The trend bodes ill for human health, and ain't good news for the planet either: warns coauthor Oliver Pergams, "We don't see how future generations, with less exploration of nature, will be as interested in conservation as past generations."
source: Houston Chronicle, Associated Press, Reuters, ScienceDaily
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Comments
View as Flat
Wolverine Posted 12:40 pm
05 Feb 2008
One other thing: most people who "view" nature do so from the inside of their motor vehicles, which is not much closer to experiencing the real thing than seeing it on TV. If you're driving in a natural area, get out and walk for awhile. Breathe the air, hear the sounds, feel the wind, temperature, and humidity. It's very different from the inside of a car, SUV, or mobile home/camper.
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usandthem Posted 11:42 am
07 Feb 2008
Fewer people camping,fishing,hunting and just walking our parks and forest is a good thing for the environment,but it is bad also.The reason is that fewer people having the experience of the great outdoors means fewer people who actually care for and want to protect these areas.People have to have a fondness for wild areas and use them or why should they care if they exist?People don't care about farms and farmers because 85% of them don't live on farms.My guess is that a majority of younger people don't even know where their food comes from and don't care,as long as they have food.They don't care about cloned plants and animals,irradiated foods,chemicals in food,genetically engineered plants and animals,improper food labeling or anything else as long as it keeps on coming. The point is that people who have no love of the outdoors won't care if there are virgin forests,or if the water is polluted,or if you push a mountain top into a river to get the coal.People make or break the environment,simple as that.
P.S. There are just too many people on this planet.We are killing our home,but the good news is that when we are gone,most of the earth will rebound and go on without us.
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