I volunteer for two institutions directly involved in conservation education, the Maine Conservation School and Unity College . One thing that has become very clear to me is that there is no clear view in the conservation community of what successful conservation education should look like. Every group from the smallest to the largest has their own education program. All of them are struggling to be successful.
It seems to me that as folks interested on conservation we should take a step back and give all of this some thought. I see tremendous amounts of duplication a scattered view of the desired end result and limited effectiveness. There needs to be a unifying theme that everyone delivers and because there are not unlimited dollars we need to seek some efficiencies. Why should each national conservation group have a program with redundant overhead? The turkey federation has one, Ducks Unlimited has and so on. At the same time each state organization has similar programs. Just the level of overhead has to be huge.
For instance Maine Audubon, Greenland Point Center and the Maine Conservation School offer similar programs and have similar facilities but there is no discussion of joint opportunities or goals. State and federal Fish and Wildlife agencies each support programs all with limited reach and effectiveness. I think that conservation education has been Balkanized to the point of being totally ineffective on its goal of actually making a difference in the way young people think. As a community we need to do better.
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