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The main-headline given to the appended Salt Lake Tribune article reads: "Nurturing love for outdoors" while the sub-headline reads: "Outdoor industry sees teens as business future." The bottom line of this article and of the entire industry-created "More Kids in the Woods" campaign, can be read in the final, uncharacteristically revealing, quote.
Read this article and decide whether the main or the contrasting sub-headline accurately explains the increasingly frantic efforts of an industry which sees the good times in its rear-view mirror and a vast emptiness of its own making, through the windshield.
I would like to add that it is the recreation industry that is most directly responsible for transforming traditional, sustainable nature-based, re-creation into unsustainable adrenaline-based wreckreation. I make almost no distinction between the efforts of the non-motorized industry described in this article and those of the motorized recreation industry which have long been the focus of own work as an environmental activist. The differences separating them are less than the ties binding them.
Scott
PS... Following the article is a passage quoted from "Protecting the Golden Goose", an appeal made in 1987 by conservationist Michael Frome to the Travel / Tourism Industry.
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1/23/2008
Nurturing love for outdoors
Outdoor industry sees teens as business' future
By Tom Wharton - The Salt Lake Tribune
The quiet of the great outdoors frightens some American teenagers.
Greta Oberschmidt notices as much when teens are forced to leave their cell phones and iPods at home.
She operates Big City Mountaineers, a nonprofit organization that takes
inner-city youth into the outdoors, and said participants often
complain about the physical difficulty of backpacking and express fear
of wild animals and the dark, only to later say the outdoor adventure
was the best thing that ever happened to them.
Getting teens outdoors is a major emphasis for manufacturers and
retailers participating in the annual Outdoor Retailer Winter Market
under way this week at the Salt Palace Convention Center.
"They are a new market," said Bryan Mahler, of the Outdoor Industry
Association's Outdoor Foundation, which offers grants to increase teen
participation.
The 34 million 12- to 19-year-olds in the U.S. spent $176 million last
year, Michael Wood, vice president of Teen Research Unlimited, said
Wednesday at the Outdoor Retailer trade show, making them a lucrative
market for retailers.
Retailers should be aware, however, that today's teens differ from their parents in many ways.
Baby boomers who grew up fighting with their parents in the 1960s and
'70s might be surprised to learn that teens today possess little desire
to separate themselves from their parents.
Wood used the term "babied boomers" to describe today's teens.
"They are more inspected and protected than ever before," he said. "They are coddled by society and adoring parents."
So how might this research help retailers and manufacturers sell more products by getting more kids outside?
One key is getting parents involved.
"That trickles down to teenagers," Wood said. "If they grow up doing
it, chances are they will carry it with them. Young people will not
reject an activity just because their parents do it."
He listed technology, laziness, emphasis on traditional sports, college
preparation, school activities, costs, fear sometimes fueled by movies
and the desire to be with friends as major reasons why teens don't want
to go outdoors. And there is the pressure put on teens to excel in
sports and school and get into a good college.
"Downtime is foreign to them and every minute is so scheduled," Wood
said. "Their life is rarely associated with sitting on the top of a
mountain crest and doing nothing."
Lindy Spiezer, of Leki - a nordic walking pole maker, said her company
is working on a pilot program that uses libraries as a lending source
where kids and their parents can check out backpacks, field guides,
compasses and poles for use in the outdoors.
"If we can concentrate on getting people out, then we will have future customers," she said.
The Outdoor Retailer Winter Market, which is not open to the public, continues through Saturday.
Outdoor recreation spans a variety of interests, tastes and
goals. Theme parks, such as Six Flags, Busch Gardens, Opryland and
Disneyland, fill particular niches. So do commercial resorts and
campgrounds. But public recreation areas are something else again,
filling a different niche. Public parks and forests provide an antidote
to urbanized living, a return to pioneer pathways, a chance to exercise
the body and mind in harmony with the great outdoors...
I believe the travel industry and citizen conservationist
organizations can work together for the long range good of the parks
and the public interest... Let us work together to keep it that way.
The emphasis needs to be on protecting and enhancing the quality and
character of each park, and letting dollar values follow. When the
desires of business interests for profit are allowed to dominate, the
beauty will be lost - inevitably, and without fail.
Quoted from: Protecting the Golden Goose
Remarks of Michael Frome, Ph.D.
Tourism and Parks Conference
Des Moines, Iowa April 14, 1987
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- Activism 
