NATURE NOTES - Number 56 November 14, 2022
Introduction:
Nature is a very broad and complicated topic. As adult scout leaders, we often need to try and simplify things to help explain it to our scouts. One of the things we have to deal with is a whole list of words that often confuse youth AND adults. Let’s look at our
Our current Topic: Confusing words
These are words that are commonly tossed around whenever you hear or read any conversation or article about “the environment” or “nature”, or “conservation”. What do all of the words mean? Do some mean the same thing? Are some rather specific? If you are not real sure with you answers or thoughts, how do you think a 12-year-old processes these words? Let’s list some of these words:
Environmentalist
Green
Nature
Preservation
Conservation
Sustainability
Ecology
The environment
Environmental protection
Natural resources
A naturalist
EXAMPLES:
I recently sat in on a meeting of a non-scout group where a new person said he wanted to join the “Environmental Committee” because they wanted to “beautify the community”. Hmmm.
How many of us donate money to some organization that “conserves” or “preserves” nature? Makes you feel good, huh? But what did you learn about nature?
Can you cut timber on your property and still be a conservationist?
Can a preservationist harvest timber?
Can a hunter be interested in sustainability?
If the teacher talked about “environmental science” today, did she/he cover bird migration? Plant succession? The impact of insects on the forest?
Does ecology apply only to nature?
Is the Sustainment Merit Badge really a “nature” merit badge?
If you are “green” are you good at understanding the workings of nature? How many birds can you identify?
If you recycle are you preserving nature? Does it help you understanding nature? Are you “green”?
If you own an electric car to save the planet, do you know how trees breathe? Are you a naturalist?
Some scout camps have a Nature Area. Others have an Ecology Area. Some have a Conservation Area. Some teach Sustainability Merit Badge as part of “nature”. Some don’t.
We all support the Leave No Trace idea, but is it about helping to understanding nature?
The point is, these words are often overlapping and confusing, and confusing words can be misleading and open to a wide range of interpretation. So asking scouts – and maybe adults - to clarify what they mean when these words are used might cause some thought rather than automatic use. The news media and various conservation or preservation groups don’t always help clarify these terms either. Maybe sometimes it’s better to confuse folks into thinking something that’s not quite what it appears. Just a thought.
Nature Opportunities:
So if thing get bored around the Thanksgiving table, you might throw these words out and ask what they mean. Might be interesting to try it with scouts too and note the differences. Or not. It won’t do much to explain nature or save the planet, but it might get the scouts to think a little about all of this and ask some good questions. A good starting point. And thinking is a skill we ought to teaching. My focus in these NATURE NOTES is learning about nature – how it inter-relates, how varied the species are, what the species are and how to identify them, why things grow or live where they do, how we benefit from nature. Sure, we need to conserve and protect and sustain, but you can do all of these and still not know much about nature. There’s a big environmental umbrella out there that many people want to get under, but in reality, they may all have different names for that umbrella and different understandings. Just keep this mind when discussing these areas with scouts. You might be surprised at what they don’t know.
Just as side note:
I periodically check on the number of “hits” NATURE NOTES gets on the BRMC web site. All I can see is how many times a particular NN has been accessed by someone. So far in 2022 (as of Oct 27) there have been 3463 hits. In 2021 the total was 32,620 hits. A couple of these 2021 NN had extremely high hits, leading me to suspect that these notes were forwarded as links by someone to a much wider audience outside of the BRMC. Maybe lots of folks were interested in that topic. Also, the longer the NN is on the BRMC site, the more hits it accumulates. This means that while the NOTE may not be opened when it is posted, it does continue to get visits over time as folks become aware of NATURE NOTES and go back and pull up older postings. Regardless, a lot of folks are reading these articles. I hope the information is filtering down to the scouts.
Have a great Thanksgiving and thanks for visiting NATURE NOTES. If you have any comments, please email me at:
