Dan's Outside

Are Americans Afraid of the Outdoors?

An article in Scientific American poses the question.

Americans have been visiting national parks and other natural reserves less and less since 1987, new research confirms. Outdoor pursuits, ranging from camping to hunting, have entered a persistent and growing decline.

“Folks are going out into nature much less and decreasingly every year,” says conservation ecologist Patricia Zaradic of the Environmental Leadership Program and co-author of the report published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. “It would take 80 million more visits this year to get the per capita number back up to the level it was in 1987.”

There is a suggestion that the fact that Americans increasingly live their lives online (he types into his computer… ;-) may be a factor.

February 7, 2008 - Posted by gdanmitchell | Commentary