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Sustainability Camps provide an opportunity for Extension educators to be in the forefront of sustainability outreach and to meet the growing demand for sustainability education. This article shares development, implementation, and evaluation of an Extension Sustainability Camp for youth, grades 4-6. Camp impact was measured via daily pre- and post-journaling activities, changes in camper lunch waste produced, and a retrospective post-then-pre household evaluation follow-up. Significant awareness and behavioral changes were documented with sustainability topics ranging from land conservation to renewable energy. The camp structure and evaluation design could serve as a model for Extension educators interested in sustainability outreach.

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Research needs in sustainability encompass a range of topics spanning much of social and behavioral science. Sustainability requires understanding human cognition, capacity to reason and make decisions, capacity for long‐term planning, understanding trade‐offs, risk perceptions, communication techniques, innovation, the consequences of improvements in efficiency, energy and other resources, complexity in problem solving, and other matters. We discuss research accomplishments and needs in the four most important areas of sustainability: (i) risk perceptions; (ii) influencing behavior; (iii) resources and economics; and (iv) problem solving and complexity.

The research reported here explored environmental terminology and scale use with farmers/ranchers, and the article provides tips for Extension educators in communicating with these audiences. Following analysis and critique of various environmental scales by six cattle ranchers, a revised environmental scale was developed and tested as a predictor of conservation behavior. A mail survey was administered to 1,000 ranchers, and a 60.2% response-rate was received. Results offer recommendations in measuring environmental identity as well as insight to perceptions of terminology related to environmental issues by farmers/ranchers.