Wildlife preservationists have been successful enough in rescuing species from the brink of extinction that some of their methods should be applied to protecting children, says a Cornell University expert.

"The wildlife model doesn't focus on individuals but on protecting the habitat or environment from which each species raises its young. Wildlife preservationists assume correctly that the species will survive and thrive if the environment is healthy," says Frank Barry, a Cornell child abuse and community development expert who served for four years on the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect. He recently presented his wildlife proposal for reducing child abuse and neglect at the fourth annual Child Abuse Prevention Conference in Albany, N.Y.

"All the hard work on child abuse and neglect has not succeeded in even reducing the problem. Not only did child abuse reports almost triple between 1980 and 1992, from 1.1 million to nearly 3 million in 1992, but actual incidence more than doubled," he says.

Incidence, he says, is the best scientific evidence of the number of instances of child maltreatment that actually occurred, as opposed to what is reported. In addition, the numbers of youths murdered doubled between 1985 and 1995 and the number of youths arrested for violent crime jumped by two-thirds during this time.

"Although there has been an encouraging decline since 1995, the school tragedy in Colorado and similar incidents elsewhere make it clear that youth violence is still a serious problem," Barry said.

During a roughly comparable time period, however, wildlife preservationists successfully turned things around for several vulnerable wildlife species. For example, alligators, which were nearly extinct by the mid-1960s, now number more than one million and are becoming a public nuisance in some areas. Since 1990, the northern spotted owl has been listed as an endangered species, and legally required measures to protect the old growth forests where it lives have so far preserved it. Preservationists also have transformed once seriously polluted bodies of water, such as Lake Erie and the Hudson River, into viable habitats for fish once again.

"Habitat pollution and damage, in the form of community deterioration, is becoming a growing threat to children, just as it is for wildlife. To preserve and protect our habitat, we need to fortify economic and social factors in our community environments to keep our own human species healthy," says Barry, a senior extension associate with the Family Life Development Center (FLDC) at Cornell and the director of a program that focuses on healthy communities. He published an earlier version of the wildlife preservation applications to child welfare in Human Services in the Rural Environment, (Eastern Washington University: Vols. 18 #4 and 19, #1, 1995).

Most efforts to reduce child abuse and neglect have been remedial, which is expensive and largely unsuccessful, says Barry. "Several studies indicate that rather than trying to patch up individual families and children after damage has occurred, we should do more to prevent damage in the first place," he says. He points out that the nation spends far more on foster care (a spending that occurs "after the damage is done") than on preventive child maltreatment strategies.

On the other hand, he notes, the wildlife protection movement spends relatively little on individual members of species, instead using resources to protect and clean up species' habitats. "For example, one study indicated that 75 percent of all inmates in New York state prisons come from just seven neighborhoods in New York City. Another found that in two low-income Chicago neighborhoods with similar income levels, one had twice as many fatalities from child maltreatment as the other because of the differences in community cohesiveness," points out Barry, who has been with the Cornell's FLDC for almost 25 years.

"If an environment has a harmful effect on our young, we have the power to change it unlike almost every other species. Having this power implies a moral imperative to use it, especially when the survival of our civilization is at issue," Barry says.

Barry offers specific policy recommendations, including:

• Consider child development as a key aspect of sustainable economic development and enlist all sectors of the community to build community assets for children.
• Offer incentives for community task forces to focus on strengthening community environments for key child development stages, such as infants-toddlers, elementary-middle school ages, and teens. These groups would address issues such as supports for new parents, good day care, healthy school and after-school environments, and finally, community opportunities to help teens find positive roles in the community during their transition to adulthood.
• Forge state-county-community partnerships to reduce gaps between rich and less-affluent communities.
• Reduce reliance on child protection services by investing more in early prevention.