We subscribe to Earthwatch Radio and today's article led us to the
original article:

http://home.comcast.net/~oliver.pergams/JEM.pdf

Here is some of the text from the email:

EARTHWATCH RADIO
Program script for 21 August 2006
Title: Screening Out Nature
Author: Alison Coulson

Video games are up. The national parks are down. A new study finds a
shift in leisure-time activities.
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For 50 years, visits to America's national parks had been steadily
rising.  But the trend reversed in 1987, and park visits began to
decline on a per capita basis. The Nature Conservancy recently funded a
study to find out why.

Oliver Pergams, a conservation biologist at the University of Illinois,
conducted the study with ecologist Patricia Zaradic. Pergams says they
compared the National Park data with a number of other factors.

"So at first we tested more traditional things, like income, or foreign
travel, amount of vacation time. We also tested whether federal funding
might be responsible."

They also looked at park capacity, the aging of baby boomers, hours
spent on electronic media, and changing oil prices.

"The ones that explained most of the downtrend, that had a 97.5 percent
explanatory power, which is, you know, very large, were video games,
movies, Internet, and oil prices."

Pergams worries that waning interest in the national parks show that
people - kids in particular - are spending less time overall outdoors.
He says parents need to get their kids away from the video games and
computers and send them outside.

"The action on this has to come from the parents. We have to limit the
time our kids spend on these media. We have to make sure they get
exposed to outdoor activity, especially involvement with nature."

Research has shown that spending time in nature as a child is an
important step in developing an adult appreciation for the environment.
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Earthwatch Radio is a public service of the Sea Grant Institute and the
Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of
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Best wishes,

Linda Scarth
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