In every bio-region, one of the most urgent tasks is to rebuild the community of naturalists - so radically depleted in recent years, as young people have spent less time in nature, and higher education has placed less value on such disciplines as zoology……The times are right for the return of the amateur, twenty-first-century, citizen naturalist. To be a citizen naturalist is to take personal action, to both protect and participate in nature.

Reconnection to the natural world is fundamental to human health, well-being, spirit, and survival.

Environment-based education produces student gains in social studies, science, language arts, and math; improves standardized test scores and grade-point averages; and develops skills in problem-solving, critical thinking, and decision-making.

What would our lives be like if our days and nights were as immersed in nature as they are in technology?

Another British study discovered that average eight-year-olds were better able to identify characters from the Japanese card trading game Pokemon than native species in the community where they lived: Pikachu, Metapod, and Wigglytuff were names more familiar to them than otter, beetle, and oak tree.

We can conserve energy and tread more lightly on the Earth while we expand our culture's capacity for joy.

This seems clear enough: When truly present in nature, we do use all our senses at the same time, which is the optimum state of learning.