Tidball's work highlighted at SHIFT Festival - Finger Lakes Times

Interview at SHIFT Jackson Hole

This series of questions was asked of Dr. Tidball,  a member of a panel dealing with the topic of Nature as a Social Determinant of Health - Applications and Implications for Active Duty Service members at SHIFT 2019.

• From your perspective, what is the Department of Defense’s interest in Nature Rx as a function of readiness?

First, there are 11.4 million acres owned by DoD - this can be thought of as a giant “pharmacy” at their disposal. Secondly, Total Force Fitness acknowledges environment as a factor, but in a somewhat negative way - positive, asset-based approaches are needed, and can be documented, towards servicemember effectiveness and lethality. the same is true for Military Families.

How could outdoor recreation provide social support structures for active duty service members and their families? How could it contribute to family readiness? 

There is a DoD funded program that deals with this question, called the Military Families Learning Network. Within it are a number of concentration areas, one of which I am the director or PI. Its called Community Capacity Building and for 5 or so years we have been working on this question. There are many webinars, blog posts and other resources there. In particular, there is a community capacity inventory and a community capacity building training series. In those, there is explicit acknowledgement of the outdoor setting, and importantly, being IN IT - recreating, meditating, eating - as a component of community capacity, which is the indicator of robust social support structures for service members and their families.

• What mechanisms drive the therapeutic outcomes of intentional outdoor-based programs for military service members and their families?

            There are a number of them - 

• How can outdoor Rx contribute to suicide aversion?

 Suicide comes from places of hopelessness and despair. Nature-based therapies and antithetical to hopelessness and despair. Observe the struggle of even the lowly ant. No ability to relinquish the desire to be alive, to stay alive. Even when doom is near. For the ant, life persists, demands to continue. EO Wilson and Stephen Kellert worked with me to refine Biophilia thinking, the affinity we humans have to other life, to LIVING.  Urgent Biophilia is this force that must be tapped into. Urgent Biophilia is a complex system of values, motivations and behaviors that give rise to life affirming actions, that lift us from hopelessness and despair, on the wings of other life.

• Can you talk about citizen science, and its place in this nature-based exercise work? 

In my work, citizen science is a great “rally point” - it provides tight focus on task and purpose, but does so in a redemptive rather than destructive way. As an Infantry guy, the mission, the job description is “close with and kill the enemy.” But balance is needed. Can those skills and talents, those mindsets be brought to bear for LIFE? Citizen science opportunities for veterans and service members provide evidence that they can. This is therapeutic.

• Can you talk about the importance of breaking down this work into its pieces (e.g., social aspect—solitary or group; exact environment—forested vs. water; type of activity; exercise duration and intensity)? 

I think of it as a three-legged stool. First, the importance of group work, at least initially, cannot be overstated. The “small unit camaraderie” analogs and the host of shared experience interaction types are bedrock “pieces” if you will, a leg of the stool.

A second leg is setting. Water lends a certain kind of context, but so do forests, mountains, deserts, etc. The key is awe, and the potential to re-frame the self in a living system. This is also critical.

The third leg is Task & Purpose (achievement helps, but isn’t critical). To feel meaningfully engaged, up to the task, prepared, essential to mission - these are all baked in to the soldier, sailor, airmen or marine. 

Later, after multiple evolutions, participants who have regained or restored an identity as a “competent operator”, they move into more solitary modes ,improving upon mastery, but still relying on the communal base of their fellows.  The penultimate evolution is mastery of the outdoor recreation type - but the ultimate evolution is actualization, of the transfiguration of recreation into conservation, when the two become indistinguishable. We no longer see legs and a seat, we see a stool. 

• Are there special considerations for active duty or vets? If they are different, how?

I really don’t know. I think the theories I have laid out hold, but certainly there are unique considerations. The edge cannot be lost for warriors, and they are not yet suffering the dislocation of being removed from the “small unit cohesion” dynamic and the Task and purpose dynamic. I want to get into this area further. 

Tidball a guest on Zombified Podcast

From the Zombified website:

Keith Tidball has seen it all, from war to disaster to real-life zombies. In this episode he talks with us about how chaos can hijack us, how disasters affect human behavior, and how to keep your sht together when you’re in the red zone. Looking for psychological conditioning tips to increase your survival odds in the zombie apocalypse? Better listen to this one.

NY Outdoor News - Bald eagle recovery a success story for hunters and anglers

New Facebook page for NYS 4H Shooting Sports

Continued work to build greater awareness about the importance of 4H Shooting Sports to R3 (Recruitment, Retention, and Reactivation) of hunters, trappers, and anglers. 

WSB: Tapping into locavores as potential hunters

As hunter numbers continue to decrease in the United States, researchers looking for ways to recruit nontraditional hunters may have found a group to tap into — locavores, or people who prefer to buy and eat local foods. 

In a new study published in The Wildlife Society Bulletin, researchers surveyed subscribers of “Edible Finger Lakes,” a magazine in the Finger Lakes Region of central New York oriented toward the local-food movement, to determine their interest and involvement in hunting. 

“Initially, my colleagues and I had this hunch based on gray literature such as newspaper reporting and books that were published,” said Keith Tidball, a senior extension with the Department of Natural Resources and the assistant director of the Cornell Cooperative Extension and coauthor of the study. 

Since locavores prefer food that’s grown, raised, produced and harvested locally, Tidball suspected some of them might be interested in hunting. 

The researchers submitted a grant to determine three things regarding the locavore movement and hunting: recruitment and retention, how food preparation plays a role in their interest, and the nutritional component of wild game and how this plays into conservation. This study focused on recruitment and retention. Read the rest of the story here. 

Tidball meets w Secretary of Interior and Agency Heads to Discuss Hunting and Fishing Access for Veterans

Tidball, who is conducting research on how park and outdoor recreation promotes physical activity and both preventative as well as therapeutic health benefits among US Military veterans, was invited to participate in a roundtable discussion with Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, Deputy Director of US Fish and Wildlife Service Greg Sheehan, and high-level representatives from the National Park Service, the US Geological Survey, and the Bureau of Land Management. Tidball, a veteran and avid outdoorsman himself, was glad to be able to share some of the results of his USDA NIFA funded research at the roundtable. A press release regarding the event is available from the Department of the Interior here.

Short documentary film tells a different kind of Hurricane Sandy story

Short documentary film tells a different kind of Hurricane Sandy story

Taking Your County Participation in CCE NY EDEN to the Next Level

Please have a look at  "EDEN 201" - 

Campus to County Webinar - Campus County Connections: Serving Military Families and Veterans in NYS

Keith Tidball presented this webinar in July of 2017. You can access the video here or see below for the slides.
 

Campus County Connections: Serving Military Families & Veterans in New York State from Keith G. Tidball

More news from the work with TKF Foundation  in Joplin after the Tornado -

https://revitalizationnews.com/article/devastated-joplin-missouri-demonstrates-spiritual-healing-power-mother-nature/

R3 and leveraging local food movements at IHEA 2017

R3 (Hunter Recruitment, Retention, and Reactivation) and the Locavore Movement IHEA 2017 from Keith G. Tidball

How nature is healing Joplin, Missouri, after 2011 tornado | Cornell Chronicle

How nature is healing Joplin, Missouri, after 2011 tornado | Cornell Chronicle

Eight ways to get ready for the next big winter storm

Eight ways to get ready for the next big winter storm

Winter Storm Stella, a nor’easter that blasted across the Northeast and Midwest, claimed several lives. At least some of those deaths were a result of physical exertion from snow removal.

Keith Tidball, an expert in emergency response at Cornell University, recommends eight things to do immediately to prepare families for future storms, disasters and emergencies.

Eight ways to get ready for the next big winter storm

Cooperative Extension and Community Capacity Building in the Military Family Readiness Context

Cooperative Extension & Community Capacity Building in the Military Families Context from Keith G. Tidball

Article in Danish newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad about nature healing wounded veterans

In today's Kristeligt Dagblad, a Danish newspaper published in Copenhagen, Denmark, an article appears detailing how nature helps injured veterans heal. In this article, my work and a quote or two appear. A companion piece to the news article can be found here.

Here is a Goggle Translate generated translation of the original article.


Natural Therapy Helps Injured Veterans
It relieves symptoms and can cause permanent resources that bring the wounded soldiers on in life, when nature is part of their treatment, concludes professionals. The US has already hundreds of associations for veterans with nature as the focal point.

Veterans who are disadvantaged of their experiences in the war, you better when they stay and in working with nature. The experience from both Danish and foreign projects with so-called nature based therapy.

Keith Tidball researcher at Department of Natural Resources by the American Cornell University and editor of the anthology "Greening in the Red Zone "on nature and green work healing effect when a life is turned upside down by war and disaster.

"People who participate in nature-based therapy, reports the extraordinarily high levels of satisfaction, improved health and reduced hypervigilance and other PTSD symptoms. I say not that nature is a green pill you can take and then Feel better, but it sets apparently a number of mechanisms
in time, "he says.

Gardening, farming, walks or to sit for hours in wait for a stag hunting tower In this connection all
nature experiences. "Man as a species was born in the wild, and here we have evolved. With or without war, we have made our best to remove us from this natural home with technology industry and by living separated in society. Many longing for cohesion and and in particular, those which
obviously lost touch or life due to violence and war. It takes in the nature. I think it here rediscovered cohesion and the experience of discovering routes back to an earlier self is the main ingredient in what is at stake, "says Keith Tidball.

In military hospitals after WWI worked veterans with shell shock, forerunner of PTSD diagnosis, in gardens and greenhouses as part of their treatment. IN Today in the US, according to Keith
Tidball "hundreds" of organizations and groups with in order to rehabilitate veterans through outdoor activities. But the anecdotal evidence from hundred years experience and recent results from smaller research projects yet to be backed by solid clinical research on long-term studies, he says.

In Denmark wrote Assistant Professor at the Department of Earth Sciences and Nature Management at Copenhagen University Dorthe Varning Poulsen, Ph.D. sore eight PTSD-affected veterans benefits of nature-based therapy in a North Zealand forest garden. She also found that veterans saw an improvement of their condition, as for everyone he also found a year after that the project ended, including because the men found ways to overcome their symptoms, which also acts, when they get home. This might dampen anxiety to sit up a large tree, where his back is covered and allows clear, explains Dorthe Varning Poulsen: "We also know that monotone movements like walking or woodcutting can bring body in a flow mode. Many mental states as PTSD or other stress-related
diseases linked to bodily responses, and when working with the body through structured activities in nature, falls symptoms calm down, "she says, now planning a larger study of 40 veterans together with Kolding Municipality.

At the same institute has Project Niels Overgaard Block out the project Veterans in the Faggrønne. 12 veterans lived for 10 weeks training center Skovskolen by Gribskov in North Zealand and were taught among other things, forestry and nature conservation.
All stood outside the labor market, as the project began. Before, during and after the effect mapped among other with interviews, observations and logbooks. Ten veterans conducted Stay, and six of them are in work or training day, two in progress with actual nature education and another got a part time job, even if he were granted disability pension. Two others got no job, but was given the strength to change their life in crucial ways: One came out of its protracted isolation in an allotment, the second inserting themselves in the Recognizing that he had Need more help. "They used the stay as a
Impetus for change. The magic is that veterans through learning and activities in nature can regain self-esteem and community, so they can better break with resignation and acceptance of a bad life. The feel again, they are life-competent and thrive, "says Niels Blok Overgaard.

AF MAJA FUNCH
funch@k.dk

Special Feature in Sustainability Science now available

WWIA – To Honor. To Connect. To Heal.

Continuing the work with Wounded Warriors in Action Foundation to document the value of outdoor recreation as therapeutic for  wounded combat veterans. Tidball at 3:57.

Wild Harvest Table Project Receives a Pair of Awards from the National Extension Association for Family and Consumer Sciences

Keith Tidball, Senior Extension Associate in the Department of Natural Resources (left), and Moira Tidball, Nutrition Resource Educator in CCE Seneca (far right) along with Paul Curtis (not pictured), Extension Wildlife Specialist, also from the Department of Natural Resources, received the National and Eastern Region Program Excellence Through Research Award.

The team was recognized for the College of Agriculture and Sciences and Cornell Cooperative Extension research and extension project, The Wild Harvest Table: Leveraging the Locavore Movement to Increase Hunter and Angler Recruitment and Retention.

Making the Extension-Military Connection