Mongabay Newscast

During the past year's pandemic and lockdowns, spending time outdoors has been soothing for many--whether found outside our homes, in parks, or via nature documentaries--and in some ways it was a meaningful reset. Both human health and conservation benefit when we spend time in nature, so today we're discussing reconnection for kids and adults: what we know about its beneficial effects, how a movement to connect with nature is growing globally, and what this means for conservation. Our first guest is author Richard Louv, who coined the phrase ‘nature deficit disorder’ and wrote the 2005 book that introduced the concept, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder, in order to facilitate discussion of the human cost of alienation from the natural world. Louv discusses the international movement kicked off by the book, what the latest research says about the connection between nature deficit disorder and a variety of physical and mental ailments, and how the pandemic shifted the pu