Program aims to treat 'nature-deficit disorder' in children

Two years ago, Richard Louv came up with a diagnosis for America's children: nature-deficit disorder. The symptoms include knowing about the outdoors in an abstract way (school reports about the Amazon rain forest) but not in a real way (actually playing in a forest).

This summer, moved in part by Louv's book "Last Child in the Woods," the U.S. Forest Service is spearheading a $1.5 million, 15-state effort to get more children back to nature, including a sizable grant to encourage outdoor youth recreation in northern Utah. At the same time, the nation's nature centers are talking about the need for more "unstructured play" in nature, according to the head of the Association of Nature Center Administrators, which has recently relocated to Logan.

"What's struck me is that despite the fact that the mountains are not very far away, when we ask how many children have been up there, maybe 20 percent have," says Lisa Perez, conservation education coordinator for the Logan Ranger District of the U.S. Forest Service. Perez wrote the grant for the $93,700 awarded this month to several northern Utah groups that include the area's Hispanic Coalition, the Stokes Nature Center and three districts of the Wasatch-Cache National Forest.

Ask the folks who work at Utah's nature centers about "nature-deficit disorder" and everyone has a story. At Red Butte Gardens in Salt Lake City's foothills, Julie Rabb says that for some children who attend the gardens' outdoor school program, "it's the first squirrel they've seen in their lives."

At Logan Canyon's Stokes Nature Center, says Jen Levy, when children are taken on a mile-long hike "for a lot of these kids it's the farthest they've ever hiked." Levy recently left Stokes to become the new director of the Association of Nature Center Administrators.

Louv's 2005 book provided the facts and the research "that we've known in our gut all along," Levy says. Some parents are just too busy to take their children farther afield than a city park, and many are daunted by scares about sun cancer, ticks and kidnappers. For many parents, the desire to keep their children indoors stems from "fear of other people," Levy says. "It's probably the No. 1 concern of parents."

Louv's thesis is that children are physically and emotionally healthier if they get outside to do more than play soccer. The freedom to roam is part of the charm, which is why ANCA is exploring ways for nature centers "to build in more time that's safe and not as structured ... some solo time within a safe boundary," Levy says.

But not all nature learning has to happen at nature centers and national forests, she adds. "You can find nature on the blacktop of a parking lot, where a weed is breaking through. We need to make those connections close to home." Even indoors, she says, a child can learn about nature by composting with worms.

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E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com

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