Use a Nature Center

I open my email to find the following subject: “we found eggs in the vernal pond!”  I’ve been corresponding with a friend about things to do outside in the spring with her two young girls, and of course I suggested Herp Hunting.  In the email, she guiltily admits that they scooped up three little unidentified eggs to take home and watch grow.  She asks, “Should I take them back?”

I’m conflicted.  You don’t have to tell me how important it is to use experiential education to get a child excited about nature—what better way than to teach than letting them watch these eggs hatch right in front of their very eyes?  I tell her exactly how to take care of them, and then explain the downside of keeping them: their reproductive chances may be significantly lower if they aren’t actually born in the pool, it’s illegal to take wildlife without the proper permits, a synthetic habitat will never equal the real thing, amphibians are a keystone species in wetland habitats, and although they were born in the water, they may need other habitats to complete their life cycle.

While this began my philosophical gears turning (over the projection of human emotions onto nature’s organisms, if it could be a positive thing, what the world would be like without us, how much the public actually knows, and if conservation can really work), the conclusion I came to was simple.  More environmental education.  More opportunities to learn about nature in nature.  Get to your local nature center!  We’ll secure the permits, we’ll take you to the best places to see things, and (if we can acquire the funding) we’ll even supply what you need to do the things you want to do.  Please use us—we’re here for you and your children.  Nature’s splendor shouldn’t go unobserved and unloved by this generation, or any generation.

 Photo courtesy of Strawberry Hill