Hot News

1.22.2008

By SEAN CLOUGHERTY
Associate Editor

WYE MILLS, Md. — As the keynote speaker at the Delmarva Forestry Conference on Jan. 12, Drew Burnett, assistant director for conservation education at the U.S. Forest Service, started with a question for the audience. He asked how many had a “significant outdoor experience” during their youth.
About 90 percent of the foresters, land owners and forest industry professionals raised a hand. Less and less youth today are getting that outdoor experience, Burnett said, and have less of an understanding and appreciation for the outdoors.
For Burnett, his significant experience came from one of his high school teachers in Tucson, Ariz., who spent summers in the White Mountains and the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest.
“He showed us how to chew pine sap,” Burnett said, “which was awful, but, you know, I remember it. That’s what drove me back every time,”
Through outreach programs, Burnett said the Forest Service is working to get more kids outside, but he also said individual forest owners can make a difference on their own.
“Even if you just take one kid out and you create that experience for that young person in the outdoors, you’ve done a lot to contribute to making sure that we have a future society that is interested in natural resources,” he said.
Burnett attributed the lack of youth spending significant time in the outdoors to several factors; increased urbanization and the lack of parks in those urban areas, the increase of single-parent households or households with two working parents, the dominance of structured play and advances in entertainment technology were a few.
Burnett said while these factors have been rising, research shows that incidence of childhood obesity is increasing, as well as a growing fear of the outdoors and lack of interest in the careers in natural resources and outdoor issues among children and young adults.
Getting kids involved in the outdoors when they are young will make them more likely to make more informed decisions about the environment when they get older and take on more leadership in their community.
“It’s not rocket science. If we don’t get the kids exposed when they’re young, how can we expect them to care about the outdoors when they grow up?” he said.
The Forest Service has programs that focus on many different aspects of the nation’s forests but also partners with other organizations to conduct outreach at local and regional levels.
Burnett said the programs reach millions of kids each year and at that, it’s still just “a drop in the bucket,” so he urged landowners to get involved and try to help individually or with one of the programs. He said the prime age to reach kids is between six and 10 years old because research has shown they are most likely to seek out more outdoor experiences than other age groups
Burnett said it has been a challenge getting the Forest Service’s messages across to some citizens.
“They think we’re about tree-huggers and we’re really not. We’re about forest management, we’re about multiple use, we’re about teaching folks how to make decisions about the environment.”
Burnett named the Woodsy Owl and Smokey Bear characters as two of the successful campaigns that have reached youth nationwide. The characters hold the children’s attention and teachers and foresters can teach a variety of messages.
Burnett said the Forest Service is also trying to capture kids’ attention by using the very technology that is keeping them inside more often. They are using Web sites to direct kids to activities and groups that meet outside.
“The idea is if we can’t get the kids out in the forest, let’s take the forest to the kids,” Burnett said.
Bob Tjaden, Maryland Cooperative Extension principal agent for agriculture and natural resources programs, gave a closing address encouraging current landowners to set the example for their children who may take over managing the forest.
He said teaching them proper forest management, proper estate planning and record keeping and the “difference between havesting for land management and harvesting for land conservation.”
“The value of the forest is more than the value than the trees for harvesting,” Tjaden said. “If they don’t manage the forest, their kids won’t have anything at all.”