400 Young Delegates Flock to Environmental Summit

They came, they sang and they talked about planting trees, caring for animals and other ways to clean up the environment. The National Youth Environmental Summit opened Friday with more than 400 delegates, ages 10 through teens.

“Children’s voices need to be heard. We’ve been pushed aside for too long,” said Kathie Leier, 18, of St. Paul, Minn. “As I move into adulthood, I’m trying not to leave behind the ideas I had.”

The delegates opened by singing along with a videotaped Kenny Loggins performance of “Conviction of the Heart,” the theme song of the three-day summit.

Speakers talked about planting trees, caring for animals and ways to clean up the environment. Enthusiasm overflowed.

Tara Church, 15, of the Tree Musketeers youth environmental group in El Segundo, helped shape the concept for the conference as one planned, led and attended by young people. She based it on an adult conference she attended in Los Angeles.

“We’re trying to be productive,” she said. “We’re going to tell them the positive things we can do.”

Delegates will draft a resolution summarizing their save-the-environment initiatives. It will be sent to President Clinton and the United Nations.

Events include planting a white oak tree Sunday morning in a park. That will open the summit’s Trees Across America planting project, which delegates plan to promote in their hometowns afterward.

Leier, a member of the summit’s steering committee, has worked for three years in the Minnesota Conservation Corps, which pays youngsters for projects like fixing up state parks. She plans to make the environment her career.

“It’s just been the love of my life,” she said. “I want to do it for the rest of my life.”

The U.S. Forest Service, corporate sponsors and the National Tree Trust, a Washington-based organization that promotes tree planting, provided money and chaperons for the summit.

Organizers hope to hold a second conference in July, 1995, at a location yet to be decided, Church said. Youths will handle most of the planning.

“Everything goes much slower when the adults are around,” she said.