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By
William Finn Bennett
North
County Times
December 3, 2006
ENCINITAS
---- Enough of the "look but don't touch" philosophy
that has been the norm for decades, says San Elijo Lagoon
Conservancy's executive director, Doug Gibson.
For almost 20 years, the conservancy has concentrated on
protecting its ecosystem and improving water quality. And
while those efforts continue, another issue is coming into
focus. Conservancy officials say they want to provide lagoon
visitors with more direct contact with nature than is
currently possible on the six miles of trails that crisscross
the park.
At
the entrance to each trail on the nearly 1,000-acre ecological
reserve, signs are posted that in no uncertain terms let
visitors know the rules and restrictions:
"Foot traffic is allowed on designated trails only";
"Boating is not permitted"; "Swimming, wading
or diving is prohibited," the signs read.
And forget about fishing. While there are plenty of designated
paths where anglers are permitted to cast lines in the shallow
three-basin estuary, there's a catch: None of those paths is
close enough to reach the water, Gibson said.
Yet Gibson may have found the solution to his bind of nature
from a distance, he said. The organization is weighing the
possibility of creating free-play zones within the 50 acres it
owns within the ecological preserve.
"I think we have been too quick to close off areas to
active recreation," Gibson said. "We have sort of
alienated the next generation from truly being able to
explore."
Gibson, a wetlands ecologist, said children develop a love of
nature by seeing it, smelling it, touching it and sometimes
rolling around in it. He said he worries that without
experiences like building a fort, having dirt-ball fights or
climbing trees, children may never develop the love of nature
that will later drive them to fight to protect it.
"If we lose a complete generation to Xbox and kids have
no (connection) to the environment, what happens when we are
no longer here?" he said.
First steps
Conservancy officials are taking an inventory of all of their
land and evaluating where such play zones might be located, in
areas where they would have the least effect on the ecosystem,
Gibson said.
"I am hoping we can start to have some of those answers
by the start of next year," he said.
But it's not just the biological effects the conservancy has
to worry about, Gibson said. It's the potential for lawsuits.
"If somebody comes here and gets hurt from climbing a
tree, we need to make sure we are covered," Gibson said.
Despite those concerns, however, the conservancy already
allows some free play in one spot in the preserve, he said.
Over the last year, conservancy workers have turned a blind
eye to people they see playing in the water in the inlet, an
area that had been off-limits in earlier years, Gibson said.
"I didn't care ---- you can't hurt water," he said
of the frolicking.
Kids need adventure
On Wednesday morning, San Diego resident Benjamin Kilroy
stopped by the lagoon to take in the scenery for a few
minutes.
Asked what he thought about the idea of creating free-play
areas for children within the preserve, he said it would be
"a grand idea."
The 27-year-old man said he grew up in Spring Valley before
Highway 125 was built, and he recalled going down to the creek
that ran under Sweetwater Road with his friends to fish for
crawdads. There were plenty of vacant lots in his neighborhood
for digging foxholes, too, he said.
"The world is a different place today; kids don't have
anything to do but play video games," Kilroy said.
"It's a waste ---- kids need some adventure in their
lives."
In addition to possible free-play zones, a nature center is
scheduled for completion at the lagoon within the next two
years. In anticipation, officials with the conservancy are
developing a hands-on nature curriculum that is in line with
state standards, to allow teachers to bring children to
outdoor classes there, Gibson said.
A 2005 study completed for the California Department of
Education by a private research firm concluded that a group of
255 at-risk sixth-graders who took part in outdoor classes
raised their science test scores by 27 percent after their
experience. The students also showed gains in cooperation,
leadership, relationships with peers and motivation to learn,
according to the study by Palo Alto-based American Institutes
for Research.
Nature deficit disorder
Gibson said that his whole attitude toward park use recently
took a jolt when he finished reading "Last Child in the
Woods ---- Saving Our Children From Nature Deficit
Disorder."
Written by San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Richard Louv, the
book discusses the increasing isolation of children from
nature. Louv attributes that isolation to several factors:
electronic entertainment such as computers, video games and
television; parents who keep their children indoors out of
fear of child molesters and other safety concerns; legal and
regulatory restraints placed on children by governments and
homeowners associations; and structured schedules imposed on
children by their parents.
Gibson said he was so impressed by the book that he began
talking to people about their own childhood experiences with
nature.
"When I ask anybody over 30 what they did as a kid, they
say they played in vacant lots, built forts, played in canyons
and woods," Gibson said. "The dynamic has changed
---- it's fear that kids are going to be taken."
Many of those who would protect the environment have forgotten
that nature is about more than just appreciation from a
distance, he said.
"Environmentalists have said you can look but not touch;
these areas are closed off," Gibson said.
He said that society in general and parents in particular have
gotten paranoid about letting children freely explore nature
on their own, and that needs to change.
Nowadays, "if you ask kids about endangered species, most
of them will talk about the white rhino, the panda, the
African elephant, but they don't know what's in their
backyards."
In his book, Louv links children's lack of contact with nature
to attention deficit disorder, childhood obesity and
depression. He notes that between 1970 and the 1990s, the
average distance that children were allowed to wander from
their homes decreased to one-ninth of what it had been.
"To take nature and natural play away from children may
be tantamount to withholding oxygen," wrote Louv, who
calls the problems caused by children's increasing isolation
from the natural world "nature deficit disorder."
Gibson said he knows that some people are going to freak out
when they read about his proposal, imagining children running
wild through the preserve, trampling on all the plants,
destroying habitat. But that will not happen, he said.
It's all about bringing balance to the park ---- allowing
children the space they need to grow and let their
imaginations run free, while access to environmentally
sensitive areas continues to be restricted.
Free-play areas could be something as simple as just allowing
children to play in the inlet channel, where they could ride
Boogie Boards or dig in the sand. Or at certain sites in the
park, it might mean allowing children to build forts or play
hide-and-seek in the foliage or dig foxholes that would later
be repaired by workers.
It will all depend on what the research shows the impact would
be to plants and animals at any given site, Gibson said.
"Our main goal is to allow free, unobstructed play, where
they can look under rocks, roll over logs and look at all the
things underneath ---- the kinds of things that you almost
have to be off-trail to do," he said.
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