Natural world offers lessons in cooperation.

Byline: BIRTH TO THREE By Beth Stein For The Register-Guard

Feeling a bit down about how little cooperation and sharing seems to be going on in the world these days? Looking for new ways to help your kids understand that these things are truly important? Try going on a nature walk or simply exploring your own backyard.

The natural world is filled with kid-friendly examples of how well things work when organisms cooperate with one another and share their living space and resources. In fact, virtually nothing alive on the planet survives without cooperating and sharing on some level with its neighbors, whether explicitly or in a more subtle manner.

As spring bursts into bloom, consider the partnership between bees and flowers. In this classic example of a mutually beneficial relationship, flowers provide bees with nectar (from which bees make honey) and bees help flowers reproduce by spreading pollen from one plant to another. Find some bees to watch with your kids (from a distance). When you finish observing, celebrate this partnership with some honey on toast!

Now check out that green stuff clinging to the branches of the oak tree in your yard or a nearby park. If it looks like deer antlers, seaweed, fish net or an old man's beard, it's probably lichen. Lichen is made up of two separate organisms, fungi and algae. The two work together directly to survive. Fungi provides the structure for the organism, and algae, through photosynthesis, provides the food. The two are inseparable. For some great lichen looking, take a walk at Mount Pisgah.

Here's a fun one for kids! Go on a worm hunt! As any good gardener or composter knows, worms are much more than slimy fish bait. As worms burrow, they aerate and loosen the soil, which helps plants grow.

And worm castings (a.k.a. worm poops) make great fertilizer! When plants die and start to decompose, they return the favor to their wriggly friends, by serving as tasty worm food.

If you have a chance to wander through a natural area, such as the Whilamut Natural Area in Alton Baker Park, see if you can find an old dead tree. A standing snag is much more than simply a hazard in the wind. It can be the shared home (and restaurant, too) for myriad wild critters - owls, woodpeckers, raccoons, beetles and ants, just to name a few.

When you see a wildlife hotel, have your kids look for home-sized holes and hollows, beetle tracks carved under the bark, evidence that someone has been pecking for lunch, or ants parading up and down the trunk.

Finally, take a big breath of fresh spring air. Did you know that plants and animals actually help each other `breathe'? Through the process of photosynthesis, plants make oxygen, which all animals (including people!) need to breathe in to survive. When animals breathe out, they expel carbon dioxide, a gas that all green plants need to absorb for photosynthesis to work.

For more fun discovering how nature models cooperation and sharing, join Nearby Nature at one of its monthly Nature Quests in Alton Baker Park or at the annual Egg Walk, on April 8 from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.

For more information, contact Nearby Nature at 687-9699 or see the group's Web site at www.nearbynature.org.

Beth Stein is the program director for Nearby Nature, a nonprofit education group dedicated to fostering appreciation of nature nearby and providing tools for ecological living. Birth To Three is a nonprofit organization dedicated to strengthening families through parent support and education. For more information about Birth To Three, call 484-5316.