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One year ago the American Recreation Coalition came into the sights of the New York Times for their non-too-subtle efforts to re-write National Park Service policies and turn America's Crown Jewels into motorized playgrounds. On June 10, 2006 the New York Times editorialized against the ARC in these words:
[What's most worrying about this last-minute lobbying - besides the fact that recreation seems limited to activities involving an internal combustion engine - is the suggestion, put forward by the American Recreation Coalition, that the Park Service revise the management policy regularly. There is only one reason for a suggestion like that: to give "recreation leaders" a regular chance to pressure the park system for increased motorized vehicle access.]
That was last year. Today, everything is suddenly different!
While the American Recreation Coalition remains as committed as ever to their long-term goal of commercializing, privatizing and motorizing recreational opportunities upon our nation's public lands, today they are using entirely new, and far more effective (and dangerous) messaging.
Today, the ARC has wrapped their agenda within a framework of children and using this frame they, and their agenda, are gaining incredible ground. Today you will not find the NY Times editorializing against the ARC's efforts. On the contrary, today newspapers from coast to coast are lauding the ARC's "Kids in the Woods" campaign as if it were other than simply another approach being taken by the same old recreation industry insiders.
Appended in an article published yesterday in which I had much to say about ARC's new tact. Pasted here is a quote from an article published today in which ARC's President explains how it is now possible to use technology in order to lure kids to nature. Make special note of these words --- "at one time technology was seen as the enemy of outdoor activity. Now, he [Crandall] said, the goal is to make it a 'friend.' "
Derrick Crandall is president and CEO of the American Recreation Coalition, a non-profit group that wants to get people outdoors. As such the group does research, keeps an eye on legislation, and tries to get out the message of encouraging "fun outdoors." Crandall shared a challenge that hits close to home with technologists: getting kids to recreate outside of the 6.5 hours a typical sixth-grader spends in front of a screen (TV, computer, iPod…). The research is fascinating. Kids, it turns out, are well aware of why they congregate in fast food places - there are triggers (like signs on the highway) that lure them there and allow them to network with others. If there were similar triggers for outdoor activities, perhaps they'd make those choices. Crandall explained how groups pushing the outdoors need to use the triggers that get to young people: text messaging, MySpace and the like. He also noted that at one time technology was seen as the enemy of outdoor activity. Now, he said, the goal is to make it a "friend." In fact, a study done with young people involving a treasure hunt was rated much higher when it involved GPS than when it did not.
Contrast what you've just read with these words from Aldo Leopold and ask yourself whose vision do you support, that of Crandall or Leopold. And finally, KNOW that in the eyes of today's land mangers, Crandall's vision has all but totally replaced that of Leopold.
"Bureaus build roads into new hinterlands, then by more hinterlands to absorb the exodus accelerated by the roads. A gadget industry pads the bumps against nature-in-the-raw: woodcraft becomes the art of using gadgets. And now, to cap the pyramid of banalities, the trailer. To him who seeks in the woods and mountains only those things obtainable from travel or golf, the present situation is tolerable. But to him who seeks something more, recreation has become a self-destructive process of seeking but never quite finding; a major frustration of mechanized society....
Then came the gadgeteer, otherwise known as the sporting-goods dealer. He has draped the American outdoors man with an infinity of contraptions, all offered as aids to self-reliance, hardihood, woodcraft, or marksmanship, but too often functioning as substitutes for them. Gadgets fill the pockets, they dangle from neck and belt. The overflow fills the auto-trunk, and also the trailer. Each item of outdoor equipment grows lighter and often better, but the aggregate poundage becomes tonnage."
-Aldo Leopold, in A Sand County Almanac
Scott
--- begin quoted ---
June 13, 2007
Programs aim to get kids outdoors
Agencies give elementary and middle school students more exposure to nature's wonders
by Keith Chu - The Bulletin (Bend)
WASHINGTON " Even in recreation-crazy Central Oregon, Les Moscoso, who
supervises the Bend-Fort Rock Ranger District's summer youth crew
program, said most kids on his crews haven't spent much time outside.
"Every year, it seems like I'm amazed how a majority of those kids
don't go out into the woods as much as you'd think," Moscoso said. "I'd
probably say 75 percent, approximately, of the kids in that program
don't go outside much."
Two years ago, author Richard Louv connected the decline in outdoor
playtime to everything from childhood obesity to attention-deficit
hyperactivity disorder. Louv argued in his 2005 book, "Last Child in
the Woods," that children are fast losing touch with the outdoors,
distracted by video games and the Internet and all of the other things
that consume their time.
"The truth is that the human child in nature may also be an endangered
species " and the most important indicator of future sustainability,"
Louv wrote in testimony that he submitted to a congressional hearing
last month. The hearing's title: No Child Left Inside.
Now, Louv's call to action has become a rallying cry for federal
land-management agencies. Last month, the U.S. Forest Service announced
$1.5 million in grants for its new "More Kids in the Woods" effort. The
Bureau of Land Management has a similar program, called "Take It
Outside." It's aimed at elementary- and middle-school-aged children, to
help them catch the outdoor bug that has drawn so many people to
Central Oregon.
The effort is seen as a way to reinvigorate agencies that have seen
their budgets " with the exception of firefighting operations " slashed
since the 1990s. Plugging the benefits of the outdoors to children
provides the agencies with a new justification for some things they're
already doing.
"There's somewhat of a public movement now around it, so what we did is
refocus our attention to the issue," said Jacqueline Emanuel, a
partnership coordinator for the Forest Service, based in Washington,
D.C.
"The idea is children just need exposure to outdoor experiences, and
they just need that first taste of wonder, and the national forest can
certainly play a role in that," Emanuel said.
None of the inaugural Forest Service projects was chosen from Central Oregon. But the
local national forest and BLM districts have made youth outreach a goal for decades.
One such program is Chimney Rock Days, run by the Prineville District
of the BLM. It's a several-day event that gives local fourth- and
fifth-grade students a chance to spend time on the banks of the Crooked
River learning about nature.
For nearly 30 years, Environmental Protection Specialist Larry Thomas
has manned the soil booth at the fair. Thomas said he does his part to
give the kids a real understanding of dirt " he makes them touch the
different types of soil.
"It's boring just listening to someone talk, so I get 'em dirty," Thomas said.
Most Crook County children " especially the ones who grow up on farms
or ranches " are pretty well-versed in the outdoors, Thomas said, but
every year, he meets children who haven't strayed far outside.
"A lot of the kids, some of them this is their first exposure being
outside as far as a natural setting," Thomas said. "That's what makes
it meaningful to me."
Fourth-grader Dustin Nelson, 10, of Prineville, said his family goes
fishing once or twice each year, one reason why the fly fishing station
at the Chimney Rock Days was his favorite.
"We got to see them fly fish, the guy who was teaching us," said
Nelson, who also owns a video game system and enjoys playing baseball
with his family. "It's like a lot of fun and instead of sitting
watching TV you're outside being active."
Nelson's second favorite activity?
"I liked the part where we ate lunch because we got to see our friends," Nelson said.
School groups are frequent visitors to the Lava Lands Visitor Center at
the Newberry National Volcanic Monument, said Mark Christiansen, the
recreation program manager for the Deschutes and Ochoco national
forests.
Techno-hiking
One way that Forest Service and BLM officials are trying to attract
youth is by embracing the types of electronic gizmos that often are
held up as competition to the outdoors.
In California, the Forest Service has led "digital camera safaris" and "GPS scavenger hunts" with Los Angeles school children.
"Kids are used to gadgets and Game Boys and hand-held things," Emanuel
said. "It was just to sort of see if using technology was a new way to
engage them."
Global Positioning System-based scavenger hunts, also known as
"geocaching," encourage kids to find a series of coordinates outside,
and has become a popular way to create an organized activity outdoors.
The BLM even has created a video podcast in New Mexico that acts as a
guided tour of a site outside of Albuquerque. Recreation
industry-critic Scott Silver, of the Bend-based nonprofit group Wild
Wilderness, said there's nothing wrong with encouraging kids to go
outside. But trying to make public lands more stimulating, along the
lines of a video game or amusement park, is counterproductive, he said.
"It's not nature that they're learning how to appreciate, and it's
certainly not the sense of adventure," Silver said. "Instead of going
out into the forest and discovering things, you become a tracking
beacon."
Silver argued that the agencies are working with the recreation
industry to make public lands less wild and untamed " and more packaged
for consumption. Silver said agencies should support free, unstructured
enjoyment of the outdoors, as opposed to fee-based recreation sites and
guided tours.
"(Agencies) are using declining visitation and Kids in the Woods to
make the statement that we need to radically and dramatically change
the way that recreation is delivered so as to make the parks and public
lands more fun for the kids," Silver said. "(Officials think) the way
to make forests more fun for the kids is to make them more like
Disneyland because that's what kids like."
Can't be told
For the past six or seven years, a Sisters High School class has aimed
to give students a thorough schooling in the local environment, before
taking youths outdoors to see it for themselves, said teacher Rand
Runco of the school's Interdisciplinary Environment Expedition.
Most recently, Runco and the program's other two teachers led their
students on a three-day rafting trip on the Lower Deschutes River.
Teachers focus on understanding and appreciating the environment,
rather than simply using it as recreation, he said. For students who've
never gone on that sort of expedition, the effect is clear, Runco said.
"They are so excited to share with someone else what they've learned
themselves or found themselves," he said. "They go, 'Wow this is the
place that we live in, and we need to take care of.'"
Ultimately, children need to experience the outdoors to appreciate it, and preserve it, Runco said.
"The kids have to be out there themselves," Runco said. "They can't be told about it."
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- Activism 
