Ways to Get Your Kids into Nature

Being in nature for kids has tremendous health benefits. There are many ways you can incorporate nature into your children’s lives, even if you live in the city.

Inspire curiosity by being curious yourself. A parent’s excitement can be spread to the children, and when you show respect for nature, your children follow suit. 【小题1】. “I don’t know! Let’s find out together.” is a wonderful way to get the ball rolling. Be open to a mutual adventure and allow your curious inner child to come out while you explore nature with your children.

【小题2】. If you have to carpool(拼车) in the morning, turn off the devices instead and encourage your children to look out of the window. The early morning fall skies are beautiful with color and migrating birds. After all, even views of nature from the car window are calming and beneficial.

Stop thinking about nature time as leisure time. Time in nature is an essential investment in your children’s health and well­being. If you view nature time as essential to good health, you will be more likely to engage in it. 【小题3】， nurturing creativity and wonder is part of your responsibility as parents.

Look at the stars. Visit your local observatory, and then drive out of the city some morning or evening for your own stargazing(天体观察) with a blanket and telescope. Observing the stars offers a deeper and wider understanding of the universe. 【小题4】.

Plant a small garden. 【小题5】. Bean and pea plants grow quickly and can be eaten when mature, so teach your children about food and the wonder of growth.

Normally giving food to wild animals is not allowed, but the situation in Florida with over 1,000 manatees (海牛) dying from hunger leads officials to consider a plan to feed them. “We’ve never done such a thing with any wildlife, but the situation has become such an emergency that it has to be considered,” said Patrick Rose, the Executive Director of Save the Manatee Club. “This is a necessary but temporary measure. But I believe the impact is lasting.”

The emerging plan would involve feeding manatees at a Florida Power & Light plant in Cape Canaveral where manatees stay in cold winter months because of the warm water discharge there. It would be an experiment involving greens delivered in a controlled manner such as by a conveyor belt. “People will not be authorized to simply start throwing food. It’s illegal, and remains so.”

Manatees have long struggled to survive with humans, whose activities bring many harmful effects. Hundreds of the slow-moving animals are struck by boats every year. The accidents have led to no-wake manatee zones throughout Florida with violations (违反) punishable by significant fines. However, they are just responsible for a small part of the loss of manatees. The hunger threat has led to a record of 1,017 manatee deaths as of Nov. 19, 2021.

This has been caused mainly by runoff from farms, urban areas and waste that promotes algal blooms (藻华). Climate change worsening algal blooms is also a factor. And it’s not just manatees. People’s health can also be affected by the blooms along with the health of a range of sea creatures. Besides, there’s an economic loss for boat captains and sightseeing tour organizers.

“Actually, saving manatees is part of saving the ecosystem. If we take care, manatees will grow well. If we don’t, they won’t,” Rose said. “We’re in the most critical position.” Manatees were listed as endangered when the government started to protect them in 1967. Increased protections helped manatee numbers increase from around 1,000 to 8,000 by 2017 enough to have their position to be downgraded from “endangered” to “threatened”.

Celebrated on June16th, World Sea Turtle Day is a day dedicated to one of the world’s oldest and most fascinating creatures. Unfortunately, this is also a day to remind everyone of the sea turtle’s endangered status.

Sea turtles have been around since the time of dinosaurs. They typically live to between 30 and 50 years of age, spending most of their lives at sea. Part of the reptile(爬行动物) family, sea turtles can hold their breath for up to five hours. This comes in handy since some species can dive as deep as 1,000 meters below the water’s surface before needing to come up for air. Sea turtles also like to get around, often migrating very long distances. One species can migrate over 12,000 km from nesting beaches in Japan all the way to feeding grounds near Mexico.

Female sea turtles return to the beach they hatched on to nest. Some species lay up to 250 eggs in a single nest, and each egg takes around 60 days to incubate(孵化). However, it’s estimated that only one in a thousand baby turtles can survive to adulthood.

Although it is worth having a day to celebrate these magnificent animals, World Sea Turtle Day also has a more serious purpose: to raise awareness of their difficult situation. Sea turtles are threatened with extinction. Plastic trash is a big problem because the turtles often mistake bags and other plastic items for food like jellyfish. In fact, half of all sea turtles have consumed plastic at some time in their lives.

Rising global temperature is another threat facing turtles. Turtle eggs that lie on warm sand are more likely to result in female turtles, which affects the animal’s diversity. Also, trash-covered beaches can make it hard for baby turtles to reach the sea.

However you want to celebrate World Sea Turtle Day, take some time to spread the word about what we can do to protect these ancient animals. Reducing the amount of plastic we use is just one small way we can help make sure sea turtles stick around for another 100 million years.