Richard Louv

Louv is nationally known for his efforts to connect youngsters with the outdoors through his "No Child Left Indoors" campaign aimed at reversing the decline in Americans, especially youngsters, using and valuing their natural resources.

Louv is the author of seven books, including, most recently, "Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder", which links the lack of nature in the lives of today's wired generation to some of the most disturbing childhood (and adult) trends such as the rise in obesity, attention disorders, and depression. Louv notes that children's play time has fallen by 25 percent in the last two decades; with the radius around the home where children are allowed to roam on their own had shrunk to a ninth of what it had been in 1970.

In addition to his writing, Louv is chairman of The Children & Nature Network, a non-profit organization helping build the movement to reconnect children and nature. Louv is a member of the Citistates Group, an association of urban observers, and serves on the member of the board of directors of ecoAmerica.

Louv was a columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune and has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor and other newspapers and magazines. Louv was also a columnist and member of the editorial advisory board for Parents magazine and helped found Connect for Kids, the largest child advocacy site on the Web.

Louv served as an advisor to the Ford Foundation's Leadership for a Changing World award program and the Scientific Council on the Developing Child, and was a Visiting Scholar at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. The United Nations commissioned his monograph on fatherhood for the U.N. Year of the Child, and has spoken before the National Policy Council in the White House.