CCE Helps Soldiers and Families Navigate the Deployment Cycle

Home > Feature Stories

What is Civic Ecology?
Civic ecology involves research into how community-based environmental stewardship activities can enhance the social and ecological structure of that community. The Civic Ecology Lab is unique in that it is based on the belief that when people get involved with local projects such as community gardening, community forestry and watershed restoration, they also benefit their own social well-being, even under harsh conditions like the aftereffects of disaster or war.

Civic Ecology and Military Families

Green spaces are sources of food and flowers, shade and recreation, and tending them can be calming and satisfying. But when planted or maintained by soldiers and their families, they can also be a way to connect with each other and a place to renew and reintegrate. These benefits can contribute to greater individual and community resilience in the face of the disruption to families and neighborhoods caused by war-time deployments.

A soldier and his wife are involved in a gardening project.**

As Keith Tidball, Associate Director of the Civic Ecology Lab, states, “People’s relationship to nature really matters when they are dealing with red zone situations like disaster or war. There is a huge scientific literature on horticultural therapy (and) on interacting with animals after trauma, or what I call urgent biophilia, calling upon our innate affinity for nature to deal with crisis.”

The Cornell Civic Ecology Lab, headed by Dr. Marianne Krasny within the Department of Natural Resources, has been partnering with Jefferson County CCE and Fort Drum to help soldiers and their families “navigate the deployment cycle” in more successful and resilient ways through contact with and restoration of nature. In addition to encouraging environmental stewardship, getting involved in community-based natural resources projects enhances a sense of family and community togetherness providing added support for the families of soldiers currently deployed.

What are community-based natural resource projects?

Stephanie Graf, 4-H Program Leader in Jefferson County serves as the liaison to the military and with assistance of several CCE staff members, is responsible for implementing the natural resource projects with communities and military families, while the Civic Ecology Lab continues to conduct the research. Stephanie says, “I believe that this project is a true blend of partnership between Cornell and Extension and can be used as a model for future programming.”

Planting a container garden.

Examples of natural resource projects that involve military and non-military families together:

· One Military Families Project, called “Defiant Gardens”, engages youth and adult volunteers in creating community gardens and provides opportunities for developing positive youth and adult relationships, sharing experiences with deployed parents, while enhancing local environments and their own quality of life. The types vary including gardens to attract butterflies, salsa gardens which grow peppers and onions that end up as salsa, serenity gardens and, of course, those that produce fresh vegetables. The concept is based on the book, Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime by Kenneth Helphand.

· Earthboxes, which are container gardens with self-watering systems have been created both at Fort Drum and Stewart Air Base and some have been sent to U.S. soldiers serving in Afghanistan.

· In November, 2010, as part of the 4-H Million Trees Project, military families participated in a tree planting at Fort Drum. Fifteen trees were planted at the Old Monument Site on Mt. Belvedere near Iraqi Freedom Drive. The project also provided staff with an opportunity to include an environmental education component; participants learned about the types of trees that were being planted, land restoration and how a community benefits through planting trees.

· A maple education program was offered to youth, ages 12-18, in a six county region this past winter. Youth learned about the maple industry including production and economics, forest ecology and sugar bush management.

· An urban tree inventory was conducted in the summer of 2010 which connected youth with the Student Weekend Arborist Team (SWAT) program from the Dept. of Horticulture. Participating youth learned about the importance of surveying trees for future replacement purposes.

· In LaFargeville Schools, youth have built bat houses which provided opportunities to study the bats.

· During an on-post celebration of Earth Day this spring, children and their parents participated in a “lending a hand to the earth” activity while learning about how they could become involved in civic ecology.

What’s next?

Within the year, all of the deployed Ft. Drum soldiers will be returning home, at least for a short time. Many veterans returning from active military duty suffer from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) or a traumatic brain injury, or a combination of both. The Civic Ecology Lab recently received funding to study the importance of human-nature interactions in outdoor recreation and restoration activities among returning war veterans, especially women and those disabled in combat, to better understand how these interactions relate to individual and community resilience.

For more information, please visit the Cornell Civic Ecology Lab.

Note: There are two statewide programs for military youth for which staff from CCE Jefferson County provide the leadership:

· 4-H Military Clubs – 4-H clubs provide a “slice of home” and consistency for military youth, who must handle the difficulty of parents being deployed for long periods of time and/or who must move frequently. Contact: Tom Wojcikowski (tdw26@cornell.edu)

· Operation Military Kids is a program designed to provide support for children of Reserve and National Guard families. Contact: Barbara Kessler (bdk49@cornell.edu)

** All photos provided by Keith G. Tidball, Civic Ecology Lab