Richard Louv Speaking Topics

• Out Wild Calling: how connecting with animals can transform our lives — and help save theirs

  In his newest book Richard Louv explores the powerful and mysterious bond between humans and other animals, including both domestic and wild animals. He makes the case that deepening our connection with other animals, both wild and domestic, can improve our mental, physical and spiritual lives; serve as an antidote to the growing epidemic of human loneliness; and is essential to the preservation of life on Earth. We love our pets. We say we love nature. We talk about the threat to other life in an almost technical way, about endangered species, disappearing habitat, but we seldom consider what may be the greatest potential loss, at least to us: the mysterious bond we share with other animals – that most fragile connection that has no name, the whisper we may not miss until it is too late, that essence that may yet save us – and them.

• PLANET HOPE: Species Loneliness, Nature-Deficit Disorder and the Future of Life on Earth

  "Nature-deficit disorder," as I defined it in my 2005 book, “Last Child in the Woods,” is not a medical diagnosis, but a useful term – a metaphor -• to describe what many of us believe are the human costs of alienation from nature, as suggested by recent research. Among them: diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses, a rising rate of myopia, child and adult obesity, Vitamin D deficiency, and other maladies. In the early 2000s, when I was researching and writing Last Child in the Woods, I identified only about 60 studies rigorous enough to cite. Today, the Children & Nature Network offers abstracts for more than 1,000 studies. Recognizing this, some physicians now write prescriptions for nature time. Animal-assisted therapy is among the fastest-growing trends in health care. We see a rapid increase in the number of nature-based preschools. Increasingly, biophilic architects are weaving natural elements into workplaces, homes, neighborhoods and cities. Biophilic design links nature connection to higher human productivity and creativity. We know this now: The more high-tech our lives become, the more nature we need. As part of the new nature movement emerging around the world, we see a growing body of evidence about animal intelligence and emotions. In the new book,” Our Wild Calling,” I make the case that strengthening the bond between humans and other animals can transform our lives — and help save theirs. In addition, I am concerned and have written about the culture’s dystopian trance, in the face of unprecedented environmental challenges, and our urgent need for imaginative hope: the ability to imagine and begin to create a future we’ll want to go to, as Martin Luther King urged us to do. This is not only essential for the long run, but for people's mental, physical and spiritual health right now.

The New Nature Movement: Conservation and sustainability alone are not enough; now we need to create nature

A New Nature Movement is emerging, incorporating traditional approaches to environmentalism and sustainability, but going beyond them. Though we don’t have a better word to replace it, the word sustain suggests stasis. Fairly or not, much of the public views energy conservation and the development of alternative energy sources as essential but ultimately technical goals. We need more than stasis; we need to produce human energy (health, intelligence, creativity, joy) through nature. For a decade, Richard Louv and colleagues have been building a new nature movement, one that asks this essential question: What would it be like if our days and nights were as immersed in nature as they are today in technology? This movement has led to national and state legislation, the growth of family nature clubs, regional campaigns, and has grown worldwide. For example, a recent international gathering sponsored by the Children & Nature Network (the nonprofit that grew out of “Last Child in the Woods,” attracted over 1000 delegates from 24 countries. It continues to grow. Nearly 100 cities, states, provinces and regions in North America have created their own campaigns to connect children and families to nature. The movement is reaching inner-cities, suburbs and rural areas.

Nature Connection as a Human Right

In a major cover story for Sierra magazine, Richard Louv writes that nascent global movement proclaims that access to nature is a civil right – a human right. When he began to make this argument in 2010, Louv reported research that suggests human beings are genetically programmed to have an affiliation to the rest of nature. Anchoring his argument in ideals of justice and fairness, he continues to make the case that nature connection is more than a nice pursuit, a pastime, or a privilege. It is a necessity. In the words of David Orr, a leader in environmental education and green urban design, the human connection to a healthy natural environment is “the ultimate human right, upon which all other rights depend.” In 2012, the World Congress of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, with involvement from the Children & Nature Network, declared nature access a human right for all children.

The Hybrid Mind

The more high-tech our lives become, the more nature we need. For every dollar our schools spend on the virtual, they should spend at least another dollar on the real – through experiential education, particularly though the natural world. The ultimate multitasking is to live simultaneously in both the digital and the physical world, using computers to maximize our powers to process intellectual data, and natural environments to ignite all of our senses and accelerate our ability to learn and to feel; in this way, we would combine the resurfaced “primitive” powers of our ancestors with the digital speed of our teenagers. I met an instructor who trains young people to become the pilots of cruise ships. He described two kinds of students. One kind grew up mainly indoors. They’re great at video games, and they’re quick to learn the ship’s electronics. The other kind of student grew up outside, spending time in nature, and they also have a talent: they actually know where the ship is. When you look at new studies of the human senses, that makes sense. Examples of schools, families and companies that incorporate the theory of the hybrid mind (directly or indirectly) into the education of children.