(no subject)

[enismirdal]

Yesterday I went to a conference about wildlife and biodiversity monitoring in my region.

One of the talks made me a bit angry and depressed - not because of the speaker, who was very good, coherent and interesting, but because of the findings.

She was looking at the reasons people visit urban green space, i.e. places like parks, public gardens, woodlands, etc. within towns and cities. The majority of interviewees appeared to be walking the dog, which is fine. But the concept of visiting for the nature was so far down almost all the people's list of reasons to be there.

What was a bit scarier was what happened when she measured people's sense of wellbeing in different sites, and compared that to the biodiversity present. For birds, yes, as bird diversity increased then wellbeing also increased. But butterfly diversity actually correlated negatively - people had more wellbeing in places with fewer butterfly species. She then looked at "perceived diversity", i.e. how much diversity of plants and animals people *think* is present in a place...and things started to become clearer. They had no idea. People's perception of biodiversity actually had NO CORRELATION AT ALL with the actual biodiversity measured by ecologists. There could be hundreds of species around them and they wouldn't even know.

However, their perceived biodiversity correlated really well with their sense of wellbeing...so people like the idea of biodiversity, they just have no appreciation of it in reality.

Then they decided to figure out why this was - do people just not know what's around them any more? They showed people 12 pictures of really common UK species. Stuff like red admiral butterflies. And asked people to name them. I didn't see the pictures so I don't know what other species were used and how good the photos were, but... The results were scary: only one single person got 12 out of 12. Most people got fewer than 3 of the species right. These weren't rare moths. These were common birds and butterflies that you could see in almost any UK garden.

How did we get so detached from nature? How did it reach the point where so many people are so far removed from their surroundings they don't even realise what's there? No wonder it's so hard to protect our biodiversity when people only have an abstract concept of what it is and why we might care. I need to do something about this.

Comments

[silver-trails.livejournal.com]

It is scary, and it explains why many people feel so alone sometimes. A good life includes having a special reationship with nature, and cities take most of nature away. I would never live out of a city, I am used to them, but the many gardens and animals (not only birds) in my uni make me happy.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

:-(

[innocencest.livejournal.com]

I'm aware of what a butterfly is, but if you asked me to name particular species I couldn't begin to guess.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

I remember two discussions with two entirely different people who probably never met in their lives, but the topic was the same. One was with a friend at university, who said something along the lines of "I was in the scouts as a kid but I can't tell one tree from another" and I just couldn't believe it. I mean, moths are one thing, but most tree species have pretty distinctive looks about them, right? So I asked what she meant, different types of oak or different types of willow or what and she said "Nope, I have no clue what a willow looks like. I can tell oaks, maple and birches apart, and that's it."
I couldn't actually believe it, because how could you not recognise an elder tree, or a beech, or hazel, or chestnut -- anyway, I had picked this up at such an early age that it seemed to me natural knowledge. Now, different kinds of willow, I may not know all their names, but I'd know they're willow trees at least, right?
This friend also grew up in a rural environment, so it's not that she didn't have the chance to learn. It's just that nobody told her (as my parents did when we took a walk) what the trees were called, and if she ever collected leaves for pressing and labelling (as we had to do in sixth grade), she just apparently didn't store the knowledge.
(To be fair, I suck at identifying mushrooms. That is, I can often tell you what it might be, but I wouldn't be so sure of myself that I'd eat it unless some certified expert had looked at it.)

The second discussion was with a Swedish roleplayer who happened to be a biologist in real life and who said her fellow gamers occasionally made fun of her because her character "never just sits under a tree - it's always an elm or a beech or some other crazily specific tree" or because, if she lets the party go through a forest, she describes the foliage and undergrowth at great length. To her, this seemed a natural thing to do - forests can be very different, and describing what it was made up of should have added to the atmosphere of the adventure. Her party apparently would have been happy with "a forest full of light and very high trees" or "a dark, dense forest", because they would've known what to make of that, rather than beeches and fern and small rowans and mossy rocks, or oaks and lichen and bramble thickets, or whatever.
I didn't find it odd to describe a forest by, you know, the actual plant life... but I can imagine that to people who don't actually have a clear idea of what the plants would look like, that sort of information isn't particularly useful.
(You also often hear that Tolkien describes landscapes at great lengths as if he wanted you to know every tree in person, and I never got that idea. Sure, he describes nature, but not in a Dickensian way or anything. He just says what's growing or not growing there. Seems to be TMI for some. *ducks*)

Anyway, how did we get so detached? Part of it probably is that nature - in the sense of the actual individual constituents, rather than some vague idea of the wholesome lush countryside - just isn't a part of most people's life. And if the parents don't know one tree or butterfly or blossom from another, they can't hand it on to their kids, so it doesn't exactly get better. The boy scouts mostly play dodge ball, too (I learned stuff about nature mostly because I tried memorising the fieldbook). One probably would have to introduce some sort of "nature awareness" program in kindergartens or early school in order to improve things for the future.
(And the grown-ups need hobbies that make it immensely useful to know more about nature. Like, ornithologists at least know different kinds of birds, right? Or, as another friend of mine put it: "I just wanted to start bee-keeping for the honey! And now I suddenly know exactly what's in flower at what time and can identify ten different kinds of bumblebee!")

TL;DR: I'm not surprised about those findings but they're depressing, and yes, something should be done.

[naath.livejournal.com]

I can look at two trees and say "ah yes, those trees are different types of tree, I can see the leaves are different shapes" but I don't know WHICH types of tree they are - because I've never spent any time at all trying to learn and they don't come with labels, and because when I was little no-one said things like "that's an oak tree" when we went past one.

Same with butterflies, or indeed anything else really.

I like being able to go and look at some nature, it's pretty, and stuff. Much nicer running through a park than running round the housing estate. But I don't really care what exactly is there; I figure "making the park have a good diversity of stuff" is someone's job, and I'm happy to pay money to someone to do this job, but I'm not really interested in the details.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Fair enough!

I admit that I have a tendency to consider things that I was taught or picked up when I was very young "natural knowledge", a.k.a. "stuff that really anyone should know because how can you NOT". So I don't really think of the details as "something one must be interested in in order to know it". (This not only goes for plants or butterflies or whatever, but also for, say, nursery rhymes. Or for How To Calculate The Date For Easter.) Rationally, I know that this is unfair, because of course different people learn different things, but it takes a conscious effort for me to remember that. It's particularly unfair because there are details that I consider specialist knowledge, too, even though others may find them as elementary as I find tree names!

[naath.livejournal.com]

My Mum tutors in maths (up to A level) - I grew up with words like "integrate" and "exponential"... possibly this is part of the reason I find maths so easy :-p

I do know tree-names like "oak" and "ash" but not in a way that I can associate with *actual trees* because I read them in stories, where the trees weren't described further.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Science teaching in schools and the nature programming broadcast on the media does not name common species in an engaging and memorable way, and utterly fails to inculcate engagement with and an urge to learn about nature. Or, indeed, any natural phenomenon that requires observation and an extended vocabulary.

Children of primary-school age only - and almost exclusively - learn the names from parents or other adults; and that means adults who are sufficiently engaged with their environment *and* engage with the child out-of-doors - a combination which is very rare.

[snowpiratess.livejournal.com]

That is upsetting. It would be great if primary school children were given a greater chance to learn about biodiversity and UK species, to try and instil some lifelong interest. I was extremely lucky in this regard, as I grew up in the countryside with parents who are keen amateur naturalists. When I was a child I sometimes resented being dragged around the county to look at wild orchids, but I'm very grateful for it now. Those childhood experiences gave me knowledge of plants, insects, and birds than many people don't get the chance to develop. Plus, bee orchids are just awesome.