Communicating Wildlife
enhances conservation dialogues & supports UK wildlife professionals & enthusiasts committed to public engagement
Our aims: Extending awareness of all things wild
Deepening ecological understanding in adults
Highlighting conservation goals & societal courses of action
Communicating Wildlife projects are collaborative activities. They take the form of commissioned research, writing & teaching. These projects exist to provide stimulation, new perspectives, discussion & practical support
Our perspective
OUR FACES ARE TURNED AWAY from nature and all things wild. People and Earth’s creatures have become estranged evolutionary partners. Human ignorance and indifference seems to have grown decade on decade as modernity has separated us from wildlife.
We are no longer watching wildlife and we certainly do not really understand the ecology of wild and semi-wild places like seas or heathland. At best we have a sketchy picture of the environmental and existential pressures wild animals and their habitats now face.
Is it all too late for Planet Wild?
NO. IF WE ALL ENGAGE more completely with the natural world, then those torn halves – humanity and all things wild – can be connected once more and a sustainable future may be possible.
Fostering ecological literacy and communicating the predicament of UK wildlife means shaping messages for the attention of adult audiences. After all, it is the adults who are on environmental and conservation watch – right now.
We grown-ups are on watch today
“ Children are the decision-makers of the future, but are not able to implement the serious & immanent actions required to safeguard biodiversity ”
John E. Fa., S. M. Funk & D. O’Connell Zoo Conservation Biology Cambridge University Press 2011 | 245
IT IS ADULTS WHO render gross material change across the globe, sponsor – directly or indirectly – scientific study of the health of the planet, and, as a result of this study, get to fashion ethical positions and use their votes for change.
What about the education of children? Childhood is a time for experiential learning and personal growth. But nuanced, collective knowledge and practical strategies for the here and now arise out of adult cognition, reason and emotion.
Far from pushing children out of the picture, paying attention to the grown-ups can ensure a reliable ‘intergenerational exchange’ of wildlife insight shared on those all-important family days spent out of doors.
Delighting children is fundamental and has long-term value, but its adults who need to be good decision-makers – today. And, of course, education is a lifelong project too. For an overview on adult engagement take a look at the literature view in these pages from a paper researched and written in 2014.
How do we connect nature & people?
“The environment is everything that is not me.”
Attributed to Charles Darwin
THAT ENVIRONMENT is big. Very big. It is an entanglement of earth, water and animals, plants and biological process. But how to communicate something as intractable and sublime as the planet’s biosphere and all that lives within it?
In our efforts to represent the planet, some might say ecological communication has descended into a hard-to-follow science. Some might listen but only hear a cacophony of apocalyptic third sector messages. Others view mediated nature as entertainment, nothing more. What we need is the sharing of scientific facts & knowledge, human instinct, values & reason. And of course, we need action too.
All is not lost
There are remarkable scientists who can touch us all with facts; enthusiasts, teachers, artists and philosophers who can help convey the importance and beauty of the living world.
Scientists warn that our wildlife and wild places need to be granted space and time for recovery, adaption and evolution: we need to give them a pause for breath.
Yes this requires insight, understanding and legislation but it also needs widespread action in the form of behavioural change. Communicating Wildlife can encourage that change.
The environment and its wildlife need protection because they care for us. With an injured environment Homo sapiens may die, even as the planet itself lives on. But with a healthier environment, populated with better-protected and biologically diverse life might again become a fully functioning life-support system.
A romantic act?
Anyone seeking to reconnect society with the wild cannot be dismissed as a dreamy romantic. Thousands want to reconnect people and wild things because we too are a part of nature. We at Communicating Wildlife are committed to a profoundly rational agenda: one that fosters knowledge, ecological literacy and actions making our shared planet a sustainable one.