Need more nature on TV and in our lives

DEAR EDITOR:

What do our children know about nature these days?

If they are trying to obtain knowledge of nature in regard to television, they will likely find the lesson quite inadequate.

I don’t really watch TV, but when I do, it shocks me how sparse real life nature programming actually has become.

I have seen quite a few commercials, however, which most effectively give a very skewed description of wildlife.

The cute leopard cub holding the remote control, although adorable, does not depict an accurate picture of real life wildlife, to be certain.

The parrot bobbing its head to a funky beat, though entertaining, is also quite unrealistic, as are the gecko lizard or frog jumping to and fro like circus animals.

There are lots of shows out there that personify animals with funny human attitudes and voices, and that seems the most convenient way our current programming would like us to understand nature; with as little realistic effort as possible.

The fact is 85% of the world’s population lives in a major city by the ocean.

This means that they don’t really get exposed to the manner in which our majestic, intricate and increasingly threatened mother nature actually works.

How often do inner-city kids get a chance to get out of the big city and go out into the woods and camp and explore nature?

I realize that there are some programs that try and give these kids a chance to get out of the city into nature, but how many actually qualify for those excursions is very likely quite small.

It’s amazing how humanized our lives have become. Everything seems to be about us humans, in the big cities even more so.

There used to be a few nature programs that existed when I was a kid. Are you old enough to remember Lorne Greene’s New Wilderness? That show was awesome!

David Suzuki’s The Nature of Things is still running, but it is one of the last remaining endangered programs to be found.

PBS is still around too, though it’s funded through the donations of people who are willing to pay to learn about nature and such, as opposed to falling under the sway of most commercialized programming these days.

I have been fortunate in my life to have had the opportunity to ride and care for horses as a youngster. I am very grateful to have had such experiences, and wish that others might have chances like that as well.

Mother nature has a way of rejuvenating and reviving the human spirit, there’s no doubt about it. I believe that is almost a scientific fact!

Getting out into nature again is something I hope not too many of us take for granted, given the abundance of places we can discover and explore with our children in this valley.

After all, it’s not all about us humans, and that is something which is a timely, precious and wondrous understanding we all need to embrace and remember now more than ever.

Jason Roberts, Kelowna