Anderson: If everyone needs exposure to nature, why aren't some metro kids getting their share?

News item: Shooting of four children, ages 11 to 13, at 1 a.m. in a stolen car raises familiar alarm in Minneapolis. Police recover 30 shell casings from what they say was a fully automatic weapon.

Nothing about the events described above should be considered normal, Thurman Tucker says. Not now or ever.

Kids who are barely in their teens should be at home at 1 in the morning, he said, not tooling around north Minneapolis in a boosted Kia, as these four were last Sunday.

And they definitely shouldn't be getting shot up by an illegal weapon whose only purpose is to kill people.

Tucker, of Minneapolis, is a conservationist. No one in Minnesota cares more about wildlife habitat (grasslands in particular) and birds (especially bobwhite quail) than he does.

But Tucker is also a Black man who lives in the Twin Cities, a husband, and a parent who knows something's wrong.

"We need to have a different mindset,'' he said. "These drive-by shootings, we're producing them, all of us. We need to own up to it.''

Tucker is a longtime friend and a kindred spirit. Like I do, he believes nature is a missing component in the lives of too many people, and that society suffers from it.

This isn't pollyannaish jibber-jabber. A hike in the woods or a swim in a lake isn't a miracle cure for what ails us. But for too many people nature's a missing part of their lives, and an important one.

The rationale for this belief is straightforward. Study after study says exposure to nature is necessary for people to lead happy, healthy and productive lives. If that's true, it can't also be true that people who are routinely denied such exposure can be happy, healthy and productive.

Born in Memphis, Tucker was 7 when, along with his two brothers and sister, he was sent to Mississippi to live with his grandparents after his mom died. It was in Mississippi that he learned to hunt, mostly rabbits, but also squirrels and quail, with his grandfather and uncles.

It was quail that Tucker could't get enough of.

And still can't.

Their whistling bob-white callings and their stubby-winged flights enchanted him. Equally, the brushy field borders where these birds lived, and the grasses and fence lines from which they flushed, seemed to call to Tucker, and when he moved to the Twin Cities in 1965 to begin a long career in the grocery business, he regularly drove to southeast Minnesota in hopes of finding the state's remnant bobwhite populations.

For Tucker and millions of other Americans, hunting and fishing were gateways to the outdoors and, in time, development of a conservation ethic. But plenty of other nature-based recreation routes to the same destinations beckon, including biking, birdwatching, swimming and hiking.

Groups such as Wilderness Inquiry, the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Twin Cities, and others do great work with metro kids. But too often for too many of these young people, opportunities to get outdoors are too few, or nonexistent.

Here's a fair question:

Where are groups like the Nature Conservancy, Ruffed Grouse Society, Ducks Unlimited, Pheasants Forever, Conservation Minnesota, Izaak Walton League, Minnesota Environmental Partnership and others?

These are among organizations that each year divvy up millions of dollars in state Legacy Amendment and other funds to restore wetlands, build nature centers and lay down bike, ATV and hiking trails …resources that, unfortunately, a large segment of Minnesotans will never see, much less use.

A re-imagining of these outfits' outreach efforts might broaden their appeal, and effectiveness.

Arguably, these groups have a moral obligation to benefit as many Minnesotans as possible. Business-wise, it's not very smart, either, to write off, as some of these organizations do, large portions of society as potential members and supporters.

'Do something'

Some might describe omission of these Minnesotans from the state's recreation and conservation loops as environmental injustice. But that term generally describes waste dumps and other fume-spewing businesses that are located in poor or minority communities because more upscale neighborhoods don't want them.

What's happening instead in Minnesota is more like cultural injustice, in which the dominant population revels in the state's many natural wonders — the North Shore, the Boundary Waters, its 10,000 lakes and more — and taxes everyone, rich and poor alike, to preserve and enhance them, while quite aware, or blithely unaware, that significant portions of the state's population never will benefit.

Meanwhile, life among those ignored populations in many instances is growing more chaotic, not less. Worse, notwithstanding Tucker's hopes to the contrary, this dysfunction is being normalized. Not by the people who live with it — to them, the dangers, and flying bullets, represent very real danger — but by the rest of us.

Way back in 1996, when 11-year-old Byron Phillips was gunned down in north Minneapolis during a shootout between rival gangs, enough was supposed to be enough.

Byron and a couple of his buddies were taking a break from playing hoops when gunfire broke out and a bullet intended for someone else hit him.

In the wake of Byron's tragic and unnecessary death, somebody, or some government agency, was supposed to make things better. But again last Sunday, as has been the case countless times since Byron was killed, the lie was put to that fantasy when the four kids in the stolen Kia were gunned down.

I'm aware none of these problems is easily solved.

But Tucker, among others, keeps trying.

In the early 2000s, he folded the Bobwhite Quail Society he founded into Minnesota-based Quail Forever, for which he is the volunteer state coordinator.

Today, of the two small Quail Forever chapters he oversees, the one in the southeast develops habitat, while the one in the metro develops kids.

"We take kids apple-picking, hiking, fishing, horseback riding, anything to connect them with nature,'' Tucker said. "The kids love it. But too many adults are too busy to help, or just don't want to.

"It seems to me we're too often chasing things that just don't satisfy us. The result is kids who are depressed or who have thoughts of suicide, or who act out. To me it's just appalling. Let's get together and do something.''