At Indiana Land Trust, It’s All About Kids Communing With Nature

Cristian Freitag had a problem gnawing at him: Fewer and fewer southern Indiana kids were getting

outside to enjoy and appreciate the area’s natural resources. One day he realized he had 5,200 ways to help deal with it.

That’s the number of acres protected by the Sycamore Land Trust, the Bloomington, Ind., conservation group Mr. Freitag runs.

“We looked at the problem and said, not only do we have 5,200 acres of nature preserves, but we can use them,” says Mr. Freitag.

So three years ago, Sycamore Land Trust started an environmental-education program to share with school kids the trust’s many assets — acres of forests, wetlands, wooded hillsides, and streams full of frogs and crayfish.

This school year, the trust expects to run field trips for more than 1,200 students.

The organization’s efforts mirror a growing national movement to get more kids outside and communing with nature. They also exemplify how land trusts are in a good position to be a leader in that movement, says Rand Wentworth, president of the Land Trust Alliance, a Washington umbrella organization for conservation groups nationwide.

The alliance’s nearly 1,700 members together protect roughly 37 million acres of American open space.

“We’re not the national parks and the huge wildlife refuges,” Mr. Wentworth says. “We are all those local, special places that you can walk to, ride your bike to, take a bus to, and engage daily with nature.”

He points out, however, that not all protected land — places like sensitive animal habitats — ought to be open to exploration. But, he says, opportunities abound to make conserved areas more accessible to the public.

‘Look and Listen’

To ready itself for school groups, the Sycamore Land Trust built a boardwalk through part of Beanblossom Bottoms Nature Preserve, a 520-acre wetlands area near Bloomington.

The boardwalk allows access to the preserve at the same time it protects the landscape. Learning stations set up along the way teach kids about the area’s animals and ecology, but a highlight of the school trips is usually the observation platform, which overlooks a swamp.

“We let kids just stand there and look and listen, and we see their eyes become bigger and how attuned they become to the sounds and all they are experiencing,” says Carroll Ritter, a Sycamore Land Trust board member and retired science teacher who designed the field-trip curriculum.

On a recent trip, he heard two fourth graders marveling over the color of a woodpecker they saw. “One boy said it was the reddest red he’d ever seen,” says Mr. Ritter. “He was captivated.”

Mr. Freitag says it’s moments like that that the trust’s environmental-education program is all about.

And, he says, there are added benefits for the organization, too.

The program has created buzz about the land trust, which has attracted attention and donors interested in educational opportunities. Also, he adds, the program is helping to cultivate the next generation of land-trust supporters.

“There may be some direct benefit in the short term in money raised or some land saved because someone heard about us,” says Mr. Freitag, “But the real payoff will come 50 years from now. It sounds so cliché to say, but investing in kids — introducing them to these unique and beautiful places — is investing in the people who will be making the decisions about our land and how our environment will look in the future.”