America’s Great Outdoors: Our Nation’s Laboratory
This disconnect is made clear to me at the start of every spring semester as the students in my environmental issues class struggle to define the term ‘land ethic’, and have little notion of the concept of ecological identity.
This problem has been the subject of many great conservation essays over the past several decades. Wendell Berry (Life is a Miracle), David Ehrenfeld (Arrogance of Humanism) and many others have argued that our material lives have become buried within individual disciplines devoid of context and inescapably deterministic.
Such reductionism is especially evident in our educational system where science is taught from a book while the greatest laboratory, just beyond the school building, is rarely explored. In such a world, we become people who live at a location rather than in a community of place. The problem is further exasperated by the fact that more than 80 percent of the country’s population now lives in cities, where opportunities to explore natural systems are easily avoidable.
This fundamental change in where we live undoubtedly has changed who we are and how we come to understand natural systems. While cities are generally considered the home of the best creative and artistic talent, pioneers of groundbreaking public policy, as well as being considerable economic drivers, cities are often simultaneously the sites of abject poverty and extreme environmental degradation. If sustainability is truly a human goal, then the development of a functional land ethic must be possible within the paradoxical context of the urban environment.
The dialogue created by President Obama’s America’s Great Outdoors initiative has the potential to both establish an agenda for conservation in the 21st century and, more importantly, to develop public ownership of that agenda. For it is only through individual investment in the stewardship of the land that we can approach any semblance of a sustainable society.
For more than a quarter of a century, the American Forest Foundation, through its programs in woodland management, conservation and environmental education, has sought to foster a sound land ethic. In particular, AFF’s educational program Project Learning Tree uses the forest as a “window on the world” to increase students’ understanding of our complex environment; to stimulate critical and creative thinking; to develop the ability to make informed decisions on environmental issues; and to instill the confidence and commitment to take responsible action on behalf of the environment.
Through this approach we hope to cultivate a citizenry with the understanding and ability to keep America’s great outdoors great. We applaud this initiative and are eager to join the conversation.
Frank Gallagher, Ph.D., is Administrator in the Office of the Director, New Jersey Division of Parks and Forestry, and a Visiting Scholar and Adjunct Professor at Rutgers the State University, Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources. He is co-chair of Project Learning Tree’s Education Operating Committee.
