‘Last Child’ inspires rethinking among land developers

Sacramento Bee – July 03, 2006
By Mary Lynne Vellinga

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Developer touts book as a guide to get kids outdoors.

Growing up in a tiny village in Greece, Sacramento's biggest developer used a homemade slingshot to hunt birds for his family to eat.

Three decades later, his daughter picked wild asparagus spears along the Sacramento River.

Now, Angelo Tsakopoulos and his daughter Eleni Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis, who together run AKT Development, have become enthusiastic promoters of a book decrying the growing disconnect between modern, plugged-in children and the wild natural world.

Tsakopoulos has handed out nearly 200 copies. "Everyone who walks in our door gets a copy," Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis said.

The book, "Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder," is quickly catching on in local leadership circles.

First published in 2005, it recently came out in paperback. Its author, San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Richard Louv, who frequently writes about parenting topics, says the book has sparked a nationwide movement that he describes as "Leave No Child Inside."

Louv blames the increased tendency of children to stay indoors on a number of factors: the lack of accessible natural spaces in modern neighborhoods, parental fear of letting children roam outside, community restrictions on certain outdoor activities and the roping off of natural preserves.

Federal wildlife regulators are planning a national conference on the topic in September. Steve Thompson, regional head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, has been pressing the book on developers and environmentalists.

"I kept asking the developers, 'Is there a better way to do business? Can we incorporate more nature into our neighborhoods?' " Thompson said. "I was surprised. A lot of them had also been thinking about this."

When he gave a copy to Tsakopoulos, the developer responded enthusiastically. And so did his daughter.

"It's a great book, and I think it's really time for people to recognize what's going on, and the degree to which kids are simply not in touch with nature the way they once were," said Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis, who has two boys.

Louv's book, she said, "is really waking us up to something that is missing: the ability of kids to connect with nature by going out and playing in unmanicured parks. This book is really going to change how we build neighborhoods."

The Tsakopoulos family is responsible for developing much of suburban Sacramento, including large portions of Elk Grove and North Natomas. So its interest in the book has intrigued environmentalists and civic leaders.

Mike McKeever, executive director of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, was surprised to receive a copy of the book in the mail from Tsakopoulos. He hopes that the region will embrace a "greenprint" plan for open space to complement its recently adopted "blueprint" plan for targeted growth. Tsakopoulos could be a powerful ally.

"I have had conversations with Angelo over the past couple of years about the importance of establishing a serious program for natural resource protection in the area," McKeever said.

Tsakopoulos controls about 40,000 acres of open land in the region, much of which could someday develop. He has clashed with federal environmental regulators over habitat preservation issues.

Most recently, he has been contending with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers over his proposal to move Morrison Creek under power lines to make way for a town center in the Sunrise Douglas development in Rancho Cordova. The agencies intend to make the creek part of a wetlands preserve running through the development.

"I was amazed that Angelo was buying a bunch of copies and sending them to people," said John Hopkins, president of the Institute for Ecological Health in Davis. "I think that's really encouraging. What it will lead to, I don't know."

Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis said developers have only begun to explore what they could do differently. But she suggested more of the habitat land set aside in and around developments could be opened to the public. Her family has been required to preserve significant amounts of land in recent years to make up for the habitat impacts of their development. Most of it is not open for regular public use.

"It would be nice if there were areas that were just open from dawn to dusk, like parks are," she said.

Thompson, of the Fish and Wildlife Service, said he, too, would like to find a way to make such preserves more accessible, while at the same time protecting plants and animals.

With many existing neighborhoods lacking any nearby nature except sports fields, some environmental groups are using the book to promote greater funding for programs that get kids out in the wild. The Sierra Club, for instance, has handed out copies as part of its lobbying effort for Senate Bill 1649, a grant program to pay for underserved and at-risk children to attend environmental education programs similar to the one held for many Sacramento sixth-graders at Sly Park.

The Sacramento Valley Conservancy intends to bring more school children to Deer Creek Hills, its 4,000-acre ranch near Rancho Murieta. "We feel like Deer Creek Hills and our other (preserves) are the local antidote to this nature deficit disorder," said Executive Director Aimee Rutledge.

In some ways, Louv concedes, his book is an exercise in the obvious. Parents realize their children are fatter than ever. They spend less time outside than prior generations, play more computer games and watch more TV.

But Louv said his book articulates an unease felt by many parents about the way their children are growing up. "There are some changes that are so large that we feel them, but we don't see them; this is one of those," he said.

While admitting that empirical evidence is still "in its infancy," Louv notes a few studies suggesting nature has a calming effect on children and reduces their stress level. He cites work done by the Human-Environment Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois that found green, outdoor spaces foster creative play, improve children's ability to interact positively with adults and relieve the symptoms of attention-deficit disorder.

But he relies mostly on a series of anecdotes, using first names only, like his interview with a San Diego fourth-grader named Paul who is quoted as saying, "I like to play indoors better 'cause that's where all the electrical outlets are."

The book tapped into the childhood memories of Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis, 40, who grew up in the Pocket neighborhood long before her father and other developers finished building it out.

"Behind the house was the Sacramento River," she said. "My favorite thing to do was to go asparagus hunting. We'd take little buckets and go along the river and also along the irrigation channels that had dried out. You would just find asparagus shooting up from the ground. It would just be there.

"My dad would hunt every season, we had quail stew and pheasants. Everything we hunted, we ate."

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