Canada Launches “Get Out” TV Campaign

Canwest News Service – August 10, 2008
By Misty Harris

After nearly five decades of spotlighting Canadian wildlife, Hinterland Who's Who is turning its cameras on indigenous creatures of a different stripe: children.

Beginning next month, the new "Get Out" vignettes will call attention to the critical need for Canadian young people to get off-line and outdoors.

The effort, part of a national, multi-agency movement to combat "nature deficit disorder," comes on the heels of a CRTC study that found Canadians in 2007 watched an average of 26.8 hours of television per week and increased their Internet usage from 11.7 to 13.4 hours a week.

The implications of increased screen time are spelled out in a new report by U.K. conservation agency National Trust, which reveals today's children are more likely to identify Star Wars characters by name than the insects, animals and birds in their own backyards.

Of the 1,651 youngsters aged 10 to 12 surveyed, half couldn't tell the difference between a bee and a wasp, less than half recognized a barn owl, and barely more than a quarter could spot a magpie. About 90 per cent, however, correctly identified Yoda and Jar Jar Binks.

"If you look at how much time kids spend watching television and movies versus how much time they spend outdoors or in the classroom concentrating on wildlife and nature, nobody should be really surprised (by the survey results)," says Debbie Griff, program manager of HWW, an initiative of the Canadian Wildlife Federation and Environment Canada.

"Get Out" will be aired in short television spots starting in September, with full-length videos being distributed online in an effort to reach Canada's ever-wired youth.

"The message is just to get out and see wildlife. It's all around us," says Griff. "We're trying to get people to understand that it's not that complicated."

Two-thirds of parents surveyed by National Trust blamed their own lack of nature know-how on spending too little time with their families outdoors. Although there's no parallel research in Canada, experts here agree that nature deficit disorder in children begins with the people raising them.

"Kids are a reflection of society," says Ted Cheskey, a conservation ecologist with Nature Canada who believes young people's dearth of environmental knowledge stems directly from "a failure in parenting" - that is, the decision to put video games, keyboards and remote controls in children's hands in lieu of insects, animals and other elements of nature.

"We get our kicks from sitting in front of a screen rather than actually feeling something," says Cheskey, who for 22 years worked as an outdoor educator.

"It's an illusion that we can replace real experiences with vicarious ones. Nature shows are great, but they certainly can't replace spending time outside."

Sandra OpdenKamp, program manager of Alberta's John Janzen Nature Centre, says parents are the greatest challenge in getting kids outdoors.

"Wherever they go, they rely a lot on the entertainment being provided for (their kids)," explains OpdenKamp. "It's intimidating for parents to go into an area where they may not be knowledgeable about the things they might see - they don't want to look bad in front of their kids - and where they need to create some of their own entertainment."

Although she credits the wide knowledge of many of the 20,000 young people who annually visit the Centre, OpdenKamp says their savvy tends to come from electronic sources rather than hands-on experience.

"It's something just for them to equate berries as something that don't come from the grocery store," she says. "They know they've eaten them before but they've never made the connection that they might walk outside and find these things."

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