From drilling for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to urban sprawl in big cities, conservationists are up in arms about America’s disappearing wilderness. It’s tempting to point fingers and lament our loss, but we should hope our children will be as lucky. They might not even care.
Statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau show visits to America’s National Parks and participation in outdoor activities as a whole have steadily dropped for the last 15 years. The 35 to 44-year-old demographic makes up the majority of park visitors. This leaves educators and environmental groups wondering about the future of America’s wilderness.
Young people today spend less time fishing, hiking and camping outdoors in the wake of pastimes that rely more on technology, said Charles Boyeall, chief of interpretation and education for North Cascades National Park Service Complex.
"We had the luxury in past generations that interest in outdoors came from other sources, like parents," he said. "We’ve certainly recognized that the youth may not see the relevance in wilderness, and we’re taking steps to fix that."
If children do not see wilderness as relevant, they certainly will not see the point in allocating resources to protect it. One program helping children in northwest Washington learn about the outdoors is Mountain School. North Cascades Institute runs the program that takes students out of the classroom for a three-day tour of their natural environment.
The North Cascades Institute opened a new environmental learning center in July 2005 near Diablo Dam. The center is the latest addition to North Cascades Institute’s Mountain School education program that has brought more than 12,000 students to the North Cascades since 1989, said Paula Ogden-Muse, an educator at the park.
The new learning center is located 90 minutes east of Sedro-Woolley, and takes most visiting students two or three hours to get to.
Mountain School offers two programs: an upper-elementary program and a high school program. North Cascades Institute works with individual schools, but has also produced an agreement with the Mount Vernon School District requiring Mountain School for every fifth-grader in the district.
The Olympic National Parks System, on Washington’s peninsula, has run a program similar to Mountain School since 1987, reaching 4,000 children each year, said Darek Staab, an educator with Olympic Parks Institute.
Staab said he attributes much of the decline in park attendance to a change in the pace of American society. He said he laments families’ schedules becoming more stringent to the point that family vacations and camping trips rarely last more than two nights on a weekend.
"The parents go back to work — sometimes both of them — and the students are off to soccer camp," he said. "Our goal is to connect people to the natural world so that they understand it to the point of sustaining it."
In 2006, Mountain School hosted 838 students, including 31 public school fifth grade classes. The high school program, piloted in spring 2006, is growing, said Bree Yednock, youth programs coordinator for the institute.
"Teachers always want to come, but it comes down to the financing and the cost," she said. "It really takes an excited science teacher to be able to express that it’s going to benefit the students and really work with some of the other teachers to get them on board with it."
Suzy Laas is one such excited science teacher. She said raising $100 per student is difficult, but not impossible.
Laas took 20 students from her sophomore science class at Squalicum High School to the center for three days last spring, and said she is planning to take two classes this year.
She said outdoor education is an essential part of promoting the conservation that will protect wilderness for generations to come. Children will never protect the environment if they aren’t exposed to the wonder of the natural world and never learn why protection is important.
"A shockingly huge number of kids have never even been on Highway 20, and you get them up there to see the lakes and mountains and just explore the world, and it just opens their minds," she said. "They get to see what it is out there that people want to protect, and why they should."
Laas said her teaching philosophy involves taking her class outside to experience science in a hands-on manner that makes it more real for her students. She said one of her students last year began crying when he looked out over a bridge on Highway 20.
"He had never seen anything so beautiful," she said.
Squalicum junior Jimmy Zourkos attended Mountain School last year. He said he and his classmates do not get out into the wilderness very often, so the experience was a memorable one. The view from Diablo Dam exposed the North Cascades mountain range, and rangers showed his class a white deer that almost looked like an albino.
"I didn’t even know that existed," he said. "There were very few people in my class who weren’t surprised by what we saw.
Laas said although she did not have any objection to her students missing school for three days, the only draw-backs of the program are the cost and the limited space at the center.
The two classes from Squalicum High School attending the camp this year comprise 60 of the 250 sophomores at the school — less than a quarter of the class.
Camp for the entire sophomore class would take five three-day sessions instead of one.
Choosing who can go is never easy and depends in a large part on how much fundraising the group is able to do, Laas said. She said she recognizes that often the children who need wilderness experiences the most are those whose families are least able to pay the $100 fee.
Many of the youths who visit the learning center each year may be venturing from their hometown for the first time, Learning Center Director Jeff Muse said. The Mountain School program requires students to leave all cell phones and other electronics at home. Western graduate students make up the center’s instructional staff, which guides the students in their learning — pointing out the intricacies of nature and asking the students questions that inspire wonder.
"It’s not just a lack of understanding, it’s a complete lack of familiarity with the natural forces of the world: What’s the weather like? Why do rivers flow where they do? How many glaciers do we have?" Muse said. "That results in a lot of degraded landscapes and unhealthy communities. The need is for people to reconnect with the places they ultimately thrive on."
Western graduate student Jenny Cloutier has worked at the institute since last spring. Huxley College’s Masters of Education program takes two years, and Cloutier will return to Western in the fall to take classes and graduate in March 2008.
Four other graduate students work at the institute with Cloutier. She said she grew up in Montana and chose to attend Western’s program with North Cascades Institute because she wants to share her love of the natural world.
"It’s important to educate people about the world around them and the effects they have on it so they can be better stewards of the land," she said. "In the future these kids are going to teach their parents."
Mountain School was once located at the Newhalem campground and held in tents for 16 years before moving to the learning center in July 2005, Yednock said. The new facilities accommodates twice the number of students and can better withstand the elements, she said.
"In Newhalem it was definitely education, but there were days with the weather, when it was about survival," Yednock said. "It was about making sure that kids were warm and happy and getting enough food. It was a great program, but definitely a different experience."
North Cascades Institute developed the new learning center in coordination with Seattle City Light and North Cascades National Park Complex. Seattle City Light, a publicly owned power utility, paid for the demolition of existing buildings at the site and for construction of new buildings. The land belongs to North Cascades National Park, and the institute runs the programs. Each partner plays a role in educating the children who will protect the backcountry in the future.
While Mountain School is the institute’s largest program, other opportunities include family-oriented courses and a 10-day North Cascades Wild summer course for teens from Seattle’s inner-city schools. The students learn about the environment while traveling by canoe to sites of restoration work.
"We want them to love the North Cascades and care for these public lands, but we’re really only successful if they begin applying it to their home lives," Muse said. "We want to see healthier landscapes and healthier communities. It’s just that education is our tool."