Danger! Danger! Are we too concerned with safety?

A major part of my job as a naturalist is to inspire people to explore, appreciate, and care for our natural resources in a manner that is fun, positive, and safe.  I have a growing concern, though, about safety.  And no, I do not feel that my safety is in jeopardy, nor do I feel that anyone else's safety is imminently threatened.  Rather, I am become gravely concerned - and bound by, a growing overemphasis on safety.  

The natural world is filled with all kinds of hazards.  Tree limbs come down and hit innocent bystanders.  Rivers and creeks flood and sweep small children away.  Snow and bitter cold harden our skin down to the bone.  A hiker enjoying a nice sunny day falls off a cliff and lands in a pile of barbed wire!   In 2013 a meteor suddenly struck a small town in Russia injuring dozens of people.  Freak accidents everywhere, and fingers are pointed every which way!  Am I being mellow dramatic?  

I'd like to think so.  

"I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination."
-Jimmy Dean

The other day I was chatting with one of my coworkers outside one of the nature centers in the forest preserve system that I work for in Illinois.  There is a small pond just outside the building where visitors can look for frogs, ducks, and other pond inhabitants.  Recently, they had contractors come through to remove invasive shrubs that were growing all around the pond in order to allow for native trees and shrubs to reestablish themselves.   It appeared as though the contractors did a very thorough job, and it was now easy to see the pond and overlook area from the front of the nature center, whereas no one could even gain a glimpse of the pond beforehand.  "I think they almost did too good of a job!" exclaims one of my coworkers.  "What do you mean?" I ask.  "Well, before they cut down the shrubs you couldn't even see the pond at all.  But now that the thickets have all been cleared out, its very easy for visitors to access the pond.  I've been seeing kids running all around the pond now, which is very concerning."  I was a little bit perplexed by my coworker's concerns about people having more access to the pond.  Perhaps she was concerned about people trampling native plants that were trying to reestablish themselves in the cleared areas. 

"It's actually a liability concern.  Especially with all of these kids just running around.  We're working on building a new split-rail fence."  I glanced curiously at the pond, which is just below a gentle slope from the paved, ADA-accessible pathway we were standing on.  It just looked so nice, so gentle...and so safe.  I could not stand the thought of seeing a fence blocking out access to this serene little spot. 

It was at this moment that realized there are dozens of these nooks that are being walled off and made inaccessible all across the country because of perceived safety concerns (see figure 1, which shows Mount Baldy,  a popular destination at a national park which has been closed now for nearly two years after a freak accident occurred that nearly killed a young boy).  But where is the danger coming from? Am I overlooking something?

I believe the problem is that we as resource interpreters are confusing safety with liability.  Safety is concerned with avoiding or minimizing practical and likely risks.  Liability is something more of a political matter, which has little or nothing to do with practicality.  

Many of us in the resource interpretation profession no longer have the luxury of deciding whether or not something is actually a practical safety concern or a political and financial liability.  Indeed, some of us would be considered heretical if we even questioned our agency's safety policies.  But I still think it's worth asking the question as to whether or not a risk is a safety concern or if it's more of a liability concern.  I believe if we look hard and deep into this question, we will find that there are fewer true safety concerns and many more liability concerns in the course of our workweeks.  Our overemphasis on liability concerns, which I believe is now masquerading itself as safety, is making our supervisors edgy and nervous, and the cost and time that it is taking to do the work we are trying to do is becoming impossible with respect to us trying to accomplish our goals of providing a quality resource interpretation experience.  Our misguided notion of liability being synonymous with safety is closing off more and more access to our country's wondrous natural resources, with Mount Baldy or that pond at an Illinois nature center being just one of my places that are now fenced off and blocked out from our view.   

Richard Louv, acclaimed author of Last Child in the Woods, argues that children's experience of risk-taking in the natural world is closer to the "natural organic way we've learned for millenia" and that children gain their self-confidence and self-awareness from experiencing the beauty in nature (2005). In other words, a certain level of risk-taking builds skill and tact in dealing with and living amongst natural dangers.  I'm not talking about a kid hurling himself into a pile of thorns or aimlessly jumping off a cliff.  I'm talking about the need for everyone to have a good, healthy sense of adventure and exploration as way to become more knowledgeable about and connected with our natural world.  We cannot predict or be prepared  for everything that can or will go wrong, and nor should we.  Rather, we need to stay focused on our goals of connecting people with their natural and cultural heritage. Safety, of course, needs to be considered, but it should not be confused or mixed in with liability, which only detracts from the experience of nature.  

Maybe it's time we all took one last hike along a cliff overhanging a fertile valley,  before it becomes walled off and restricted as we're eaten alive by "safety."  

Figure 1:  Mount Baldy in the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore is one of the largest coastal sand dunes in the country.  In 2013 a small boy fell into the sand dune and nearly suffocated.  The National Park Service immediately closed the entire area to start investigations.  At the time of this blog post, this area is still closed to the public while the exact cause of the accident remains unknown.  This photo if from 2012, about one year before the closure of this section of the park.
References
Last child in the woods: saving our children from nature-deficit disorder.  By: Louv, Richard. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.  2005


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