The Nature Conservancy - NewsFront: Online Trend

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Do People Still Care About Nature?
Nature recreation worldwide — from camping, hunting and fishing to park visitation — has declined sharply since the 1980s, and the negative consequences for nature and conservation could soon be profound, says a study sponsored by The Nature Conservancy.

Researchers Oliver Pergams and Patricia Zaradic first suggested in a 2006 paper that our growing infatuation with video games and the Internet—which they coined “videophilia”—is responsible for a per-capita decline in nature recreation. With support from The Nature Conservancy, they recently examined visitation rates at all sorts of public lands. The results, published in the Proceedings of the National Acadamies of Science, continue to suggest people are turning away from outdoor activities. Will conservation efforts suffer? We asked Pergams.

The Conservancy’s chief scientist, Peter Kareiva, says the trend you’re describing is more “foreboding” than tropical-forest loss or global warming.
What we do about those problems is about people’s response and interest in the issues. If there’s no interest, there will be no response.

Is it possible that people are simply turning toward new forms of outdoor recreation — such as kite surfing or backcountry snowboarding — that are not counted by your study?
It’s perfectly likely these things are increasing. In our study, hiking and backpacking increased. But they are such a tiny percentage of the total that it doesn’t mean much. People have also pointed to increases in outdoor sports equipment sales. But just because somebody buys a surfboard doesn’t mean he uses it. The 14 U.S. trends we looked at each have between 15 and 72 years of data and currently represent 1.5 billion participation events annually. I’m pretty sure that captures popular trends.

Is there any upside to media consumption? Some research suggests movies like Bambi and Finding Nemo have inspired environmental activism.
Dirk Kempthorne, the secretary of the interior, told me in 2006 that the visit decline in parks wasn’t so bad, because it meant less wear on them. What we needed were more webcams, he said, to increase people’s knowledge of the parks. I started to argue with him but realized I didn’t have the full body of research behind me. It seems intuitive to most of us, but hard data doesn’t exist to prove time spent in nature has more effect than time spent watching nature on screens.

You’ve taken action on this issue, with a media-free July for your kids.
It’s not a problem for my 18-year-old, a tennis player, or 16-year-old, an artist. But my 11-year-old is a game and video addict, and he’s irritable and cranky for about two weeks before he starts going outside and playing with his friends.

How are you expanding this research?
I’m interested in looking at fear of nature. One hypothesis I’d like to test is whether or not videophilia creates fear of natural areas — the nightly news running stories about scary people hiding out in the woods, people getting lost and animal attacks. As we get less familiar with the outdoors, we may go into protective parent mode and keep our kids close.

—Oakley Brooks