KIRTLAND, Ohio — “Some of the things that you'll want to pay attention to are the shapes of the flowers,” Tom Masaveg says to a group of campers preparing for a hike.
Masaveg is the public progams coordinator at Holden Arboretum and the Cleveland Botanical Garden. On an interactive hike through the butterfly garden at Holden Arboretum campers ages 7 to 9 are exploring plants in search of butterflies, their eggs, and caterpillars, too.
But they are also discovering so much more along the way, including different kinds of pollinators from bees to certain beetles.
"They go on hikes that aren't just a simple hike; they have to develop intuition by practicing camouflage techniques," Masaveg told 3News. "I don't think that they're always expecting to learn as much as they do. We kind of sneak that in, and yeah, they're realizing things as they go."
And that includes "going up": Tree climbing gives them a glimpse at what it’s like to be an arborist.
"They actually have to wear harnesses and helmets," Masaveg noted, "and they end up climbing a giant oak that's as high as a house."
There is bird banding, too, an activity that builds empathy for living things.
"[The organizer] uses things like radio technology to help the kids track and map where — dark-eyed juncos are a native bird here — where they territory is," Masaveg said, "and we talk about if that changes it could be a change in the environment."
This is the first year for the Arboretum Action Camps that run through Aug. 4. Inspiring future environmentalists is what camp organizers hope to do, so that they can work together to tackle climate issues in the future as well as those problems facing nature right now.
"And there happens to be a disease right now that's affecting the beech trees in the Ohio forests that we're researching,” Masaveg added, "and the kids are going to be able to be exposed to that and start learning how they can help contribute to solutions for that problem."
There are also summer camps at the Cleveland Botanical Garden centered around the theme of "connection." Masaveg says that learning the spot the changes within nature indicates whether something will affect humans, which it ultimately does because we are all part of the same ecosystem.
