As an environmental educator, I feel deeply privileged to be participating in the lives of my students. My passion is strong. I tend to be like a protective parent with my young people as I experience anger over those who continue to damage our Earth’s environment and the future of my “kids”. Many of my students do not understand my anger simply because they have not experienced the negative impact of those who are...

As a working conservation biologist and an environmental educator, I have gained enough experience to be passionately euphoric as my young students acquire a genuine consciousness for interdependence in Nature. I have also experienced the stubborn ignorance of some adult humans as they exercise their belief that they are somehow entitled to special privileges that are destructive to Nature. Usually, this group of maligning adults attempt...

“When our central organizing priority becomes the well-being of all life, then what happens through us is the recovery of our world.” -Joanna Macy – Active Hope I fear for the future of my class of high school students who are finishing their final year before going to college. We adults are leaving these fine young people a real ecological mess. Many of you who are reading this essay know the grim projections of bad...

“People normally cut reality into compartments, and so are unable to see the interdependence of all phenomena.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh In my work as a conservation biologist, I often experience an arrogance by many adult humans as they refuse to embrace Nature as their home. These people seem to reject the idea that : “We humans need Nature, but Nature doesn’t need we humans” I often find myself searching for the root causes...

  “Not only is no man an island, but rather his “interbeing” is shared with the plants and animals he eats, the people who make his clothes and food, the people who populate his home, country and the very world he perceives, the insects that pollinate the trees that yield his fruit, shade him from the sun, and provide lumber or his...

  We older folks are leaving an ecological mess for our younger generations.  While thoroughly enjoying my senior years, I have experienced a profound internal struggle as I try to understand why we older folks are leaving an ecological mess for our younger generations. As a scientist and conservationist, I see this process of “Nature denial” taking place. I see the everyday activities of ordinary people impairing...