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 new study sponsored by The Nature Conservancy.
The study examines data from the United States, Japan and Spain on everything from backpacking to duck hunting. It builds upon earlier Conservancy-funded studies by Oliver Pergams of the University of Illinois-Chicago and Patricia Zaradic of the Environmental Leadership Program that correlated a decline in visits to U.S. National Parks with an increase in television, video game and Internet use....
Oliver Pergams and Patricia Zaradic: The decline in some nature use seems to be accelerating, such as U.S. state park and national forest visits, as well as fishing. Others show a more steady decline, such as U.S. and Japanese national park visits and U.S. Bureau of Public Lands visits.
Most reliable long-term per capita visitation measures of nature recreation peaked between 1981 and 1991. They've declined about 1.2 percent per year since then, and have declined a total of between 18 percent and 25 percent...
The average person went from hiking once every 12½ years to hiking once every 10 years.
On the other hand, the average U.S. person visits a state park two or three times every single year. The large decreases in more popular activities like state park visits far outweigh the small increase in hiking...
Other research shows that the time children spend in nature — particularly the activities we looked at in this study — determines their environmental awareness as adults.
We recently wrote a review paper looking at this phenomenon as well as at the effects of videophilia on childhood development. These effects are substantial and include obesity, attentional disorders, lack of socialization and poor academic performance. By the way, this and our other papers are available at www.videophilia.org.
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