Childhood Foraging as a Means of Acquiring Competent Human Cognition about Biodiversity

Abstract

With informants from metropolitan Ottawa and the Niagara Peninsula, Canada, tests were made of the hypothesis that broad foraging for natural things in childhood develops personal competence in assessing the biodiversity of local habitats. Responses from initial groups of informants were used to compile region-specific checklists of natural kinds of things foraged. These checklists then became the basis for questionnaires administered to samples of teenage informants, who were also asked to complete a quiz indexing sense of biodiversity by comparing local habitats. Mean breadth of foraging proves to be around 30 natural kinds, and the hypothesis linking breadth of childhood foraging with sense of biodiversity, tested by analysis of variance, is accepted at modest to fairly high confidence levels. Persons who forage more natural kinds in childhood have a better sense of biodiversity as adults.

Urban Foraging in Berlin: People, Plants and Practices within the Metropolitan Green Infrastructure

“…Sustainable urban development needs stewardship of urban people for their green environments in general, and in particular for biodiversity [35,76]. Urban foraging obviously raises awareness of and engagement with the existing urban biodiversity, simply by using it [53,61].…”

“…It was common that respondents described actively expanding their childhood knowledge of forageable species as they grew older. Teenagers who foraged for more natural things as children had an increased sense of biodiversity [61], and childhood play experiences in wild environments have been correlated with positive perceptions of natural environments and outdoor recreation activities later in life [62]. Relatedly, almost 2/3 of respondents had a family member who foraged; two respondents with children described foraging with them; and children also took part in one of the foraging tours.…”

Teaching: Natural or Cultural?

“…While adult role models may not be available, older brothers seem quite happy to show off their skills to impress their juniors (Little, 2011;Biyaka-Neuwelt-Truntzer, 1981;Puri, 2005). There is an extremely relevant body of research that supports the notion that children are "natural" foragers and do not need to be taught or even shown how it's done (Chipeniuk, 1995;Heth & Cornell, 1985;Hunn, 2002;Piel, 2012; Teaching: Natural or Cultural? 28 Zarger, 2002).…”

The Health Benefits of Children by Different Natural Landscape Contacting Level

“…However, Pretty, Peacock, Sellens, & Griffin (2005) have spoken of the contact with nature can be divided into three levels; first is viewing nature, followed by people being in nature and finally, actively participating and involving in nature: such as gardening, farming, hiking, camping, cross-country running, horseback riding or interacting with nature. Chipeniuk (1995) examined the impact of foraging during childhood and its impact to their future environmental knowledge. It was noted that those who had foraged more diversely during their childhood or adolescence, had better knowledge of biological diversity.…”