Because it is hard to define a nature center precisely, it also becomes a bit arbitrary to identify the first one. Raymond Kordish and Frank Graham Jr., who ran the National Audubon Society’s Nature Centers Division in the mid-1970s, described an operation launched in 1920 outside of New York City as “one of the earliest successful ventures of this kind.” They attributed the start of the nature center idea to Benjamin Talbot Babbitt Hyde, a member of a socially prominent New York family who was a big advocate of nature education, especially for urban youth. Hyde wanted to give them opportunities “to live in the woods for a while and go home knowing more about the land than when they arrived.” To that end, he convinced a Boy Scout camp director in Bear Mountain State Park on the Hudson River just north of the city to allow him to create a “nature museum” as a supplemental activity for Scout camps. Hyde’s “nature museum” had many features later nature centers would come to embrace themselves: a staff of naturalist-instructors, nature lectures, guided walks, “before-breakfast” bird study hikes, and live animals (including an owl, snakes, and a “very tame skunk”).

The Bear Mountain Park facility primarily served Scouts, but the concept inspired other nature education enthusiasts in the region. When the first nature centers to serve broader audiences emerged, they were also in the greater New York City region. In 1941, in Watchung Reservation just west of Newark over on the New Jersey side of the Hudson, a small nature display set up on a table in a plant nursery maintenance garage was such a hit that the whole building was quickly given over to exhibits and morphed into the Trailside Museum (now the Trailside Nature & Science Center). In 1943, a donated tract of land in Greenwich, Connecticut, became the site for the Audubon Nature Center at Greenwich (now the Greenwich Audubon Center)–the first of what ultimately became a nationwide network of nature centers operated by the National Audubon Society. By the 1950s and early 1960s, the nature center idea began to catch on in other places, and new centers opened in more rapid succession: Aullwood Audubon Center in Dayton, Ohio (1957); the Hudson Highlands Nature Museum in Cornwall, New York (1959); Kalamazoo Nature Center in Michigan (1960); Austin Nature & Science Center in Texas (1960); and New Canaan Nature Center in Connecticut (1960) are some prominent examples. With the arrival of the environmental awakening in the 1970s and driven by early advocates like John Ripley Forbes (who founded the Natural Science for Youth Foundation) and the team at Audubon’s Nature Centers Division, nature centers began popping up like mushrooms after a rain.

An hour or so later, she announced that dinner was served. It was spaghetti, and it was—well, actually, not too bad, but a little strange-tasting. Knowing her lack of expertise and my lack of cookbooks, I asked how she had managed it.

“I started with a big can of tomato sauce,” she said. “Then I went through your cabinets and added a little of everything that smelled like spaghetti.”

I hadn’t thought of this incident in ages, but it popped into my head recently when I was doing some consulting for a nature center that had not done any strategic planning for years. Lots of nature centers fit into this category, and many share similar trajectories. Without the prioritized recipe of a strategic plan, they continue to launch new programs, activities, and features as various staff and/or board members chase personal dreams and inspirations. How do they determine what is appropriate? It’s anything that “smells like a nature center.” Nature centers tag monarch butterflies, don’t they? We’ll host a series of programs. Nature centers build wetlands, right? I’ll write a grant. Nature centers start forest kindergartens, yes? Let’s do that.

When centers proceed in this fashion long enough, their brands become muddied, their schedules and spaces become crammed with stuff no one has had the courage to get rid of, and their staffs become overworked and burned out. My advice to those that become my clients is always the same: Do a strategic plan. Determine what matters most to your organization and what matters least, and then follow that plan. In other words, keep the girlfriend, but buy a cookbook.

Dr. John Falk has a term that describes people who visit museums and similar institutions for the purpose of escaping the stresses of their daily lives. He calls them “Rechargers.” I believe nature centers, mostly because of their trail systems and contemplative vistas, have always seen more than their share of Rechargers—people who visit not to learn new things or introduce their children to the natural world, but to restore their own souls. My own surveys at nature centers (discussed in a previous blog post) suggest that up to 30 percent of visitors to nature centers fell into this category in the pre-coronavirus days. I have no doubt that the figure is much higher now.

And here is something else I believe: Those visitors are your nature center’s best friends. They are connected to your center, sometimes fiercely so, because it is so important to their sanity. For many of them, it is the most significant island of peace in what has become a growing sea of chaos. While I don’t have research to support my hunch, I have seen and heard of many instances where these people, the Rechargers, have fought at Board meetings and City Council hearings and on social media to protect the nature centers they love.

And the irony is, you mostly don’t know who they are. Unless you charge an admission fee or check the membership status of people who visit your center, Rechargers are largely invisible. They don’t ask questions, they don’t come into the building to buy field guides, they don’t wait around for the next snake talk. They march straight from the parking lot to the trailhead and back again at the end of their walk.

As the economy slams into reverse, and tax dollars dry up and summer camp revenues shrink and donations disappear, I’d submit that now is the time to find out who your Rechargers are. Ask them for their names and contact information. Build relationships with them. Because you’re going to need all the friends you can get.

Mostly, we don’t think of nature centers as being federally-run. There are just a handful of federal facilities that actually have “nature center” in their names: Zion Nature Center in Utah (operated by the National Park Service), New River Nature Center in Oregon (operated by the Bureau of Land Management), and Cranberry Mountain Nature Center in West Virginia (operated by the U.S. Forest Service) are examples. Those are all closed now—but many of them shut down in the winter anyway.

However, there are lots of federal facilities with titles other than “nature center” that nonetheless function like them, serving local populations and doing environmental education year-round—two functions that separate them from most park and refuge visitor centers. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) runs some of those places. The visitor center at John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum is a good example: located close to a major population center (Philadelphia), hosting lots of school groups and local visitors in every month of the year, and strongly woven into the community through partnerships of all sorts. As it happens, Tinicum is open on a limited basis at present, part of a group of 38 refuges that the USFWS reopened for a 30-day period in order to restore “opportunities, including hunting” that would otherwise be lost. Other refuges in that 38 that operate nature center-like facilities include Minnesota Valley NWR in the Twin Cities and Rocky Mountain Arsenal NWR near Denver.

Federal employees who have been furloughed can’t so much as answer the government phones, and the few still working aren’t allowed to talk about the shutdown or its impacts. “You understand . . .” one USFWS staffer said to me, apologetically.

In many places, though, federal agencies are important partners of non-federal organizations, offering nature center services as part of a team effort. And some of those partners are free to be a little more candid about the current situation.

“We’ve been walking around through our partners’ empty offices, watering their plants and feeding their fish,” reports Saul Weisberg, Executive Director of North Cascades Institute (NCI). His organization is a nonprofit partner of federal agencies, operating within North Cascades National Park and elsewhere in western Washington State to provide learning adventures for all ages, most of them on federal lands. NCI shares its headquarters with staff of both the National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service. The Institute’s programming continues and its Environmental Learning Center within the national park remains open because the park itself is still open.

The partners are soldiering on, and in most instances have not canceled programs or altered their operations much, if at all.

In Yellowstone National Park, staff of nonprofit partner Yellowstone Forever report that “[Our] educational programs are continuing with slight modifications. . . . [For instance,] we’re sticking closer to the road due to the limited emergency services.” At Grand Canyon National Park, the nonprofit Grand Canyon Conservancy’s programming “will proceed as planned,” according to Mike Buchheit, Director of their Field Institute. At Tijuana Estuary Visitor Center in San Diego, supported by a group of partners that includes the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the USFWS, California State Parks, a cooperating association, and a Friends group, the non-federal players are operating the center.

Indeed, because most sites remain open to visitors and many services (especially those offered by partners and concessions) are still available, what Buchheit says about Grand Canyon could apply to many places: “To the untrained eye, it’s kind of business as usual.”

However, it is behind the scenes—and into the future—that the impacts are most severe.

Almost every partner organization I talked to voiced concerns about the shutdown’s less obvious impacts and future implications. “All the project planning, all the scientific research, came to a screeching halt,” says Buchheit. NCI’s Weisberg echoed that partnership activities are “at a standstill.” And he expressed special uneasiness about the impacts on National Park Service seasonal hiring. Right now is when summer staff are recruited, hired, and processed. To the extent that that process is delayed, summer workers may be late in reporting, or may not be available at all. Partner organizations have a wide spectrum of scheduled warm-season programs and activities that rely on the involvement of federal seasonal staff, from volunteer training at Tijuana Estuary Visitor Center to student trail-building work in the Cascades to the Grand Canyon Field School’s education programs. If those seasonal staff are not available on time, “that’s going to be bad,” says Weisberg.

One other aspect of the delay may also have an impact on those partners, like North Cascades Institute, the Grand Canyon Conservancy, and Yellowstone Forever, that generate earned income from their role as official sales agents for their partner parks, forests, and refuges. When federal visitor centers are closed, as most currently are, so are the sales outlets they house. Every day that continues, partner organizations lose earned income they need to run their operations.

So, while the impacts of the government shutdown on nature centers and similar organizations may not be obvious, they are significant . . . and likely to continue. Weisberg puts it this way: “The ripple effects are huge, and the longer it goes on the bigger and more weird those waves will get.”

Thinking about your most recent visit to [insert name of nature center here], which ONE statement BEST describes your main reason for visiting?

• I wanted to explore and learn new things about nature, history, and similar topics.
• I was with someone else (children, grandchildren, students, out-of-town visitors, etc.) and wanted them to have a good experience.
• I heard that the nature center is an important place to see in the greater [name of the nature center’s home town] area.
• I was pursuing a professional interest or personal hobby (birdwatching, wildlife photography, research, geocaching, etc.).
• I went because the nature center is a good place to reflect, recharge, and just get away from day-to-day life for a while.
• I went mostly to get some exercise.

If you’ve read the last two entries to this blog, you may recognize the influence of Dr. John Falk’s research on this question. (If you haven’t, you might want to do so now. . . .) I’ve been trying to determine why it is that people visit nature centers.

Now, go back to the question above. Think about the nature center that you know best. Estimate the percentage of visitors to that center that would select each answer. Are most of them “Explorers?” How many are “Professional/Hobbyists?” Do any of them just visit because they’re training for competitive trail runs?

Every center is a bit different. However, I’ve asked this question of nearly 1,000 people at half-a-dozen different sites across the U.S. so far, and some patterns are beginning to emerge:

• “Facilitator” is the most common user type. Typically, 30% or more respondents say they visited with someone else they wanted to have a good experience.
• “Recharger” usually places second—and at two nature centers, actually represented the most frequent response. Overall, this answer has been selected almost 27% of the time.
• “Professional/Hobbyist” comes in third so far, chosen a little over 15% of the time.
• “Explorers”—who are typically the target of most of our exhibit dollars—have made up only 12% of respondents.
• Over 9% of respondents to my surveys (which have all been done at nature centers with trail systems) say they visited “mostly to get some exercise.”
• Less than a tenth of one percent say they heard the nature center is “an important place to see . . . .”

So—what do you think? Are there any surprises here? Or are these results about what you would have expected? Talk among yourselves. . . .

What makes Dr. Falk’s stuff so valuable is that it’s actionable. You can do things at your nature center to serve the needs of the different types of visitors he has identified. He offers a number of practical suggestions in his book Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience. Here is a condensed version, with some of my own experiences added in:

Explorers. Falk says, “In many ways, Explorers are like serious shoppers or habitués of flea markets; they love to browse and bump into intellectual ‘bargains.’” How do you meet their needs? Always offer new stuff: new displays, new programs, new social media posts. In your exhibits, provide “layered” interpretation that invites them to move down to the finer print if they want more details. And let them wander around in pursuit of their own agenda—Explorers don’t like to be spoon-fed.

Facilitators. What satisfies a Facilitator most is believing that they are a good parent (or grandparent or friend) because they have made their guests happy. So one thing you can do is cater to their guests, who will often (though not always) be kids. You can also give Facilitators tools that make them successful, like the backpack discovery kits that many centers offer. Do you have an interactive exhibit for young children? Many of those children will be in the company of grandparents (a.k.a. Facilitators) who are there to engage with their grandkids. But we old people get tired! Put seating close enough to the exhibit so the adults can interact and rest at the same time.

Professional/Hobbyist. My friend Amy likes to explain, “I don’t shop—I buy.” She isn’t an Explorer, she’s a Professional/Hobbyist. As Falk says, “These visitors are typically on a mission.” Another thing about them is that they are often influencers, sought out by friends to give reviews. And they give critical ones, so get things right. (I visited the newly-opened “Wonders of Wildlife Museum & Aquarium” in my hometown of Springfield, Missouri, recently. In foot-high letters on a prominent wall they printed a quote by forester and conservationist Gifford Pinchot, and spelled his name “Pinchat.” I spent the rest of my visit looking for other things they might have gotten wrong.) Other things you can do to meet the needs of Professional/Hobbyists: connect them with your experts, give them behind-the-scenes tours, and host their meetings.

Experience Seekers. As I mentioned in my last post, I don’t think most nature centers see very many of these. But if you have something iconic at your site, highlight it, and make sure people can take selfies with it in the background. Better yet—make sure your staff and volunteers are trained to offer to take those photos for them! At the Michigan DNR’s Outdoor Adventure Center in Detroit, they have a display that does the job automatically, taking your picture in an “eagle nest” and allowing you to post it on Facebook or email it to all of your pals.

Experience Seekers like to let everyone know they’ve visited your site!

Spiritual Seekers. Falk has more recently taken to using the term “Recharger,” which I like. And nature centers see a lot of them. These are the people who consider your site a “hidden gem” . . . and want it to stay hidden so they don’t have to share it with a bunch of boisterous kids. Enhance their visits by opening your trails early and late, and by putting out lots of benches in quiet, beautiful places. I once saw this taken a step further at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Philip Merrill Environmental Center, where they attached a hard-bound blank journal to a bench with a little chain, and tucked it onto a shelf under the seat. Rechargers entered all kinds of thought-provoking comments, many prompted by entries already recorded there. Cool!

Exercisers. I must confess, I spent most of my years as a nature center manager trying to discourage this group. But I know they would have welcomed a water fountain about halfway out on our longest trail!

Next time—Do you really know who your visitors are, and how they fit into Falk’s categories?

Here is my synopsis of his main points, though—and I hope he forgives any misrepresentation I inflict on his work. Falk says that, when people visit a museum or similar institution, they are driven by one of five motivations. (I add a sixth for nature centers. Keep reading.) They may have different motivations on different visits, he says, but during any one visit one motivation will predominate. Though they are fluid, you can think of these as “visitor types.” Using his names but my explanations, those types are:

• The Explorer. Driven by a broad curiosity, Explorers have lots of questions, read stuff, and in general approach their visit with an open-mindedness that their name implies. Often, in my experience, they are first-time visitors to your site.
• The Facilitator. A Facilitator brings other people to your center, and is mostly concerned that those guests have a good experience there—“good experience” as defined by the Facilitator. Facilitators can include grandparents with children, teachers with students, locals with out-of-town company, and even kids who have visited in the past with a school class and return with parents in tow.
• The Professional/Hobbyist. This is the visitor who knows more about some aspect of your site than you do. At nature centers, they are often birders or botanists or wildlife photographers. Like Explorers, they ask questions—but unusual questions. I am a Professional/Hobbyist when I visit your site. “How many square feet is this building? Which company did your exhibits? What percent of your electric bill is offset by your solar panels?”
• The Experience Seeker. You’ve seen these people on Instagram and Facebook, snapping selfies in front of Rodin’s The Thinker to show that they have been there. They visit certain places because “you’re supposed to.” Think of them as collectors of experiences. I believe they are rare at nature centers, because—unlike some of the more famous museums—most nature centers are not iconic enough to make the “must see” list.
• The Spiritual Seeker. The Spiritual Seeker comes to your site because it’s good for their soul. Your center is an island of calm in their lives, a place to step out of the rat race for a while and reflect. There are a few of them in art museums, wandering among the Impressionists on their lunch hour. There are lots of them at nature centers, walking the trails and sitting on the benches.

At nature centers, I have encountered one more visitor type out on the trails and boardwalks that Falk doesn’t mention. It includes the local high school cross-country team practicing for their next meet, power walkers trying to beat their best time on your three-mile loop, and a few others. I think of this type as the Exerciser. Many people who run or snowshoe on your trails are Spiritual Seekers, choosing to use your trails rather than the streets and sidewalks of their subdivision because of the natural setting. Some, though, are clearly focused on the workout. Those are the Exercisers.

Now, why does this analysis matter? It matters because, if you want to create satisfied customers who get the most possible from their nature center experience, you need to cater to their needs. Falk has some suggestions about how to do that. I’ll touch on those, and add some of my own, in my next post.

I was talking to her on the phone today, and she asked me this:

“Have we ever written a statement that explains why we think nature centers should get into the preschool business?”

Well, no, we haven’t. I guess the logic of nature centers opening and operating nature-based preschools has always seemed self-evident, at least to us. But maybe it isn’t so obvious to everyone else.

So, Rachel and I took a few minutes to spell it out. Here are the reasons we think nature centers should operate nature-based preschools:

• If you’re serious about forging a deep connection between children and the natural world, the earlier you start, the better. Children’s emotional responses to nature—which form the foundation of their future learning and behavior—develop in the first few years of life.
• There is no better time to engage parents (and grandparents!) as supporters of your center than when their children (and grandchildren!) are young. By the time the kids are in junior high, parents may be just dropping them off at ice-skating lessons on the way to Home Depot. At preschool age, they dote on every finger-painting. Nature-based preschools are the intake-portal for lifetime family involvement.
• Nature-based preschools benefit from association with a nature center’s brand, and strengthen it. In West Bend, Wisconsin, the school district and the local YMCA have partnered with Riveredge Nature Center to offer a nature-based preschool. Why partner? Because Riveredge contributes “nature credibility.”
• For nonprofit centers, nature-based preschools are one of the few activities that have the potential to be financially self-sustaining.

Am I leaving anything out?

So, we’ve said it: Nature centers belong in the nature-based preschool business. If you want help getting started, give us a call.

“There were some very rare orchids in that bog at the time, the late 1970s,” said Schneider. “They were there every year until word got out how easy the bog was to visit.” And, presumably, how easy the orchids were to dig up and carry off.

It’s a conundrum. Part of the mission of many nature centers is to convince people how special the place is, and how worthy of protection. But the unintended corollary message is that a place worth protecting is often worth stealing.

Back when I began my career as a naturalist along the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia and North Carolina, I got to witness firsthand the never-ending battle between park rangers and the park visitors who thought it was okay to uproot azaleas and rhododendrons along the roadside to take home, or local “entrepreneurs” who snuck into the woods to steal ginseng and other valuable roots. Later, I worked with the Missouri Department of Conservation, and spent time walking publicly-owned glades with the agency’s herpetologist, who would point out the rocks that had been flipped by people searching for unusual snakes and lizards to sell.

So what are nature center administrators to do? How do they juggle the desire to let people experience the exciting rarities of nature without giving them the opportunity to cart them off?

Back in 2007, the National Audubon Society’s Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary staff discovered some spectacular blooms on a very rare ghost orchid (Dendrophylax lindenii). The plant was close enough to an existing boardwalk to be easily seen through binoculars. Should they let the public know? Ghost orchids are endangered and legally protected. They are also highly coveted by orchid aficionados, and frequently poached. (Susan Orlean’s 2000 best-selling book The Orchid Thief is about this species.) Should they tell people about it, or keep quiet?

They decided to publicize it. But they made a thoughtful decision. The plant was well protected: 50 feet up in a cypress tree, surrounded by alligator-infested swamp, along a heavily-trafficked boardwalk that was closed and essentially inaccessible at night. The ghost orchid became a big hit, generating great interest and significantly boosting attendance to the center. And it’s still there.

So there is no clear answer to whether or not nature centers should advertise their best features. But they should think long and hard about the secrets they share, because secrets can’t be “untold.”

I find myself wondering about that this week. Certainly, the new President opposes many things that most nature centers (and the folks who run them) care deeply about. He is likely to open more federal lands to oil and gas exploration. He has claimed that global climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. And, while he hasn’t really indicated any particular interest one way or another in parks or green places (other than golf courses), he has been interviewing for important resource-related Administration posts people closely tied to industry and anti-environmental points of view.

Ironically, though, what is likely to be bad for nature in the long term may be good for nature centers in the short term. That may especially be true for those centers that draw support from donors, members, and volunteers, whether they are nonprofits or government-run facilities with Friends’ groups. Call it the “James Watt Effect.” As Harry C. Blaney III wrote in the Chicago Tribune several decades ago, James Watt, appointed as the U.S. Secretary of the Interior back in 1981, was “Ronald Reagan`s gift to the environmental community.” He was so flagrantly awful, so outspokenly anti-environmental, that membership in conservation organizations soared in response.

We are already seeing history repeat itself, as the phones of conservation groups ring off the hooks. The Sierra Club says the reaction has been “jaw-dropping.” In less than two weeks following Trump’s election, the organization reported 26,862 donations, 13,487 new monthly donors, and $1.5 million in total gifts and pledges. I suspect their experience is being replicated in environmental organizations all over the country.

I think this trend is driven by a profound alarm among their supporters and potential supporters: The federal government has suddenly turned from an ally into an opponent of the conservation positions they hold dear. Now more than ever, they need other institutions to express their point of view. I believe that nature centers, especially those that are unabashedly willing to take advocacy positions, are going to be able to follow the Sierra Club’s lead, and grow in strength even as the opposition does the same.

And my hunch is that they’re going to need to.