{"id":3179,"date":"2024-10-10T15:27:44","date_gmt":"2024-10-10T14:27:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/?p=3179"},"modified":"2024-10-18T10:35:34","modified_gmt":"2024-10-18T09:35:34","slug":"culture-and-nature-5-why-conservation-should-embrace-natural-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/?p=3179","title":{"rendered":"Culture and Nature – 5 – Why Conservation Should Embrace Natural History"},"content":{"rendered":"

Section 5 \u00a0– Why Conservation Should Embrace Natural History<\/strong><\/p>\n

download as pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

Natural History is undergoing something of a revival but over the last century it went from being a mainstay of UK culture to a backwater interest, as the conservation movement mostly sidelined it in favour of ecological science, and the \u2018alternative\u2019 environmental revolution largely passed it by.<\/p>\n

Important and facsinating though ecological science is (I am a fan), Natural History works in a different way, which makes it more \u2018relatable\u2019 and accessible person to person.\u00a0 It also relates directly to place, landscape and identity, all of which make give it huge potential for building connections between nature and popular culture.<\/p>\n

Traces Of Nature Culture <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Nobody was measuring public levels of \u00a0\u2018Natural History Knowledge\u2019 before the late C20th era of opinion polling and environmental anxiety but the nature ability prevailing in times past has left its traces all over popular culture, such as in entertainment, stories, religion, traditions, folk beliefs, decor and businesses.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve ever \u201ctouched wood\u201d or thrown a coin into a fountain or \u2018wishing well\u2019 for luck, you\u2019ve engaged with nature beliefs going back not just to Anglo Saxon times but the Bronze Age.\u00a0 Such traces provide abundant evidence that ability to identify wild plants was once normal because it was essential for treating illness in people and farm animals, and for food.<\/p>\n

Nature knowledge was still common knowledge in the C16th, when William Shakespeare conjured up these lines for Oberon, King of the Fairies, in A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u2018I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine: There sleeps Titania sometime of the night …\u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

Shakespeare\u2019s audience were probably aware of what those wildflowers actually looked like, even if they don\u2019t actually all grow and bloom in the same place. \u00a0They would be rarely encountered in the everyday lives of most theatre-goers today.\u00a0 In The Tempest<\/em> he had the spirit Ariel sleep in the bell of a Cowslip, which is not a Primrose but how many contemporary playrights or movie makers would know the difference?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Cowslips left and Primroses, right<\/em><\/p>\n

Living Legends<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Natural History knowledge used to be vital in marking out our landscape.\u00a0 Medieval and \u2018Dark Age\u2019 equivalents of surveyors and politicians often referred to specific native tree species in marking out the \u2018bounds\u2019 of estates and territories that became parishes.\u00a0 In The Real Middle Earth<\/em><\/a>, Sussex University psychologist and Shaman Brian Bates shows how the Dark Age folklore which inspired J R Tokein\u2019s landcsapes in Lord of the Rings <\/em>is geographic not imaginary \u2013 it\u2019s this country.<\/p>\n

Due to various historical accidents described by writers such as Oliver Rackham<\/a>, the UK still has more ancient trees than anywhere else in Europe.\u00a0 They are painstakingly plotted by the Ancient Tree Forum<\/a>, and the subject of the Woodland Trust\u2019s \u2018Living Legends<\/a>\u2019 campaign.\u00a0 Such old trees, often hundreds and some thousands of years old, are a key ingredient of the \u2019mysterious\u2019 feel to many UK landscapes, often refered to by visitors from the European mainland but largely un-noticed by modern UK citizens.<\/p>\n

1066<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Many such trees were sites of cultural importance or landmarks known to \u2018Celts\u2019 and Anglo Saxons.\u00a0 Richard Muir describes<\/a> how on learning that the Normans had landed in Southern England in 1066, Saxon King Harold gathered the English army at the \u2018Hoar Apple Tree\u2019, a \u2018landmark tree\u2019 on Caldbec Hill in the Sussex Downs.\u00a0 (Hoar means a tree made hoary looking by being encrusted with lichen, probably a very old tree).\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0We still couple \u201choary\u201d with \u201cold\u201d but the living coat of muticoloured lichens was almost totally wiped out by industrial air pollution in the C19th and 20th<\/sup>, leaving book illustrators and graphic designers with a standard image of tree trunks as just \u2018brown\u2019.<\/p>\n

1930s<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Detail from Walter Spradberry\u2019s\u00a0 \u2018<\/em>Flowers of the Season<\/em><\/a>\u2019 London transport poster (1933) which could almost serve as an identification guide, showing realistic Harebell, Scabious, Tormentil, Ragwort, Chicory, Feverfew and others.<\/em><\/p>\n

Before chemical herbicides such \u2018wayside flowers\u2019 were abundant and often gathered for Village Show competitions, as medicinal herbs, or for decorating churches and homes. So no surprise that they featured in commercial art used to promote taking a bus to the countryside.\u00a0 In later decades, graphics in advertisements became more abstract and C21st visualisations of \u2018meadows\u2019 and even \u2018nature\u2019 brand products routinely show astroturf style blank green grass with or without token yellow blob dandelions or, a variety of multicoloured but unreal, or non-native flowers. [Read more<\/a>].<\/p>\n

1950s<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Another indicator of the past knowledge and abundance of wild plants is the diversity of their different local (\u2018folk\u2019) names collected by poet, writer and naturalist Geoffery Grigson for The Englishmans Flora<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>\u00a0Published in 1955 just before intensive chemical farming started to sterilise the countryside, many of the traditional names relate to pre-Christian magical beliefs about the role of plants, as well as their uses in food and medicine.<\/p>\n

Take some of the wild flowers said (it varies) to be traditionally placed in the \u2018May Garland\u2019 or \u2018Fairy Garland\u2019 at the top of a Maypole<\/a>: Red Campion, Stitchwort, Dandelion, Bluebell, Blackthorn, Elder, Hawthorn, Rowan, Wood Sorrel and Herb Robert.<\/p>\n

For Red Campion, Grigson records 63 local names, for Stitchwort 106, Dandelion 53, Bluebell 83, Blackthorn 27, Elder 17, Hawthorn 74, Rowan 38, Wood Sorrel 57 and Herb Robert, a small pink cranesbill now commonly regarded as a garden \u2018weed\u2019 but with an enormous list of magical associations, no fewer than 111, including \u2018Pucks Needles\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>Ancient May cycle nature traditions were exported from Europe to America and became a version of \u00a0\u2018May Day\u2019 in the US. The traditional garland was of local wildflowers.<\/em><\/p>\n

When Natural History Was Popular Culture<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018Natural History\u2019 became a hugely popular interest in of the C19th, including in the UK.\u00a0 As a science it went back to the Ancient Greeks but Natural History Societies and \u2018Field Clubs\u2019 sprang up all over the newly industrialised societies including the UK.<\/p>\n

Natural History was taught in C19th universities, schools, and informally, among the Societies themeslves, with countless expeditions to record and collect specimens, journals in which to record findings, and buildings to display collections.\u00a0 London\u2019s Natural History Museum opened in 1881.<\/p>\n

More than this, having a good general knowledge of nature where you lived was widely respected and fashionably emulated.\u00a0 Lacking cars and foreign holidays, efforts were usually local and contributed to municipal and regional civic pride.<\/p>\n

In 2014 Jennifer Frazer wrote an anguished account of the rise and subsequent decline of Natural History education in a Scientific American<\/em> blog Natural History is Dying, and We Are All the Losers<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 She pointed out that when \u2018Natural History flourished\u2019 in the 18th and 19th centuries, not only Linnaeus and Darwin, but the US Presidents Washington, Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt \u2018were avid and avowed naturalists\u2019. It was \u2018a time when basic knowledge of local plants and animals was considered part of a good education — and of being a good citizen\u2019 …. [and]<\/p>\n

\u2018\u00a0<\/em>Anna Botsford Comstock<\/em><\/a> published a textbook in 1911 for elementary students and teachers called\u00a0<\/em>Handbook of Nature-Study<\/em><\/a>\u00a0which exploded in popular sales. Between 1890 and 1940 texts such as hers were an essential part of classrooms across America. The aim was to train teachers and facilitate direct contact between children and living organisms in order to create an “essential nature literacy”\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018A Masterpiece of Social Mechanics\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Natural History Societies were open, involving and in the cutural mainstream of the time. To support their activities such as exhibitions, museums and libraries, \u2018Societies held fundraising events, including popular musical acts, dinners with visiting speakers and even gambling. This of course made Natural History locally visible and socially embedded, and it was promoted as good for health and social standing.<\/p>\n

Diarmid Finnegan records<\/a> that C19th Scotland had at least 70 Natural History Societies and \u2018Botany, geology and meteorology … were recommended … as physically and mentally invigorating pastimes\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 David Page, geologist and \u2018enthusiast for intellectual culture\u2019 advocated for more field clubs and science associations because \u2018natural history , more than other forms of intellectual culture, offered a stimulating distraction from the debilitating effects of routine urban existence\u2019 \u00a0<\/em>Page was careful to point out the dangers of narrow scientific professionalism , a condition incompatible with \u201cthe duties of brotherly sympathy , honest manliness , and good citizenship , which render life sweet and society enjoyable\u2019\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n

In The Naturalist in Britain<\/em><\/a>, David Allen describes the field club model as a \u2018masterpiece of social mechanics\u2019 because, says Finnegan:\u00a0 \u2018With low subscription rates , out-of-doors camaraderie and general informality , field clubs had an appeal that transcended social divisions of gender and class even if the impact of an egalitarian ethos was uneven\u2019.<\/p>\n

These days perhaps only competitive sport is credited with such benefits.<\/p>\n

C20th: Natural History Decline<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The main factor which eventually sent the civic natural history into decline was the growing dominance of professionalised science.\u00a0 Having succeeded in popularising nature education to the point where it was adopted in the formal education system, once there, its advocates saw it progressively eclipsed by more \u2018modern\u2019 sciences, which were regarded as a superior form of learning.\u00a0 Frazer writes of the US:<\/p>\n

\u2018Naturalists<\/em> …<\/em> commanded respect at universities, and taught many field classes and courses<\/em> … <\/em>dedicated to identifying and understanding the life histories and evolutionary relationships of particular groups of organisms: flowering plants, mosses, lichens, mammals, fungi, insects, invertebrates, birds, insects, fossils, birds, and so on — a host of tangible living things to which people could directly relate …<\/em><\/p>\n

After World War II, everything changed … The pendulum swung away from outdoor field studies toward indoors laboratory research on fundamental processes. Scientists who studied underlying processes of biology — evolution, cell biology, biochemistry, etc., — got bigger grants and better publications than those who studied the organisms themselves. Funding and grants for natural history evaporated\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n

How Conservation Let Natural History Slip<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The foundations of most of UK conservation \u2013 government and NGOs – were laid in post-war Britain.\u00a0 A desire to see it taken seriously inadvertently contributed to a decline in Natural History.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The first UK National Nature Reserve, at Beinn Eighe, purchased in 1951.<\/em><\/p>\n

In 1949 the UK Government \u2018Nature Conservancy<\/a>\u2019 was set up by Max Nicholson, a lifelong hyper-active polymath with a visionary talent for identifying needs for political or social machinery and then fixing them.\u00a0 Nicholson played critical roles in founding or operationalising WWF, the BTO, IIED the RSPB, as well as initiating the UK\u2019s urban nature parks movement and the strategic data journal ENDS.\u00a0 Aiming to convince politicians and the media of the importance of nature conservation, he strong-armed the BBC into funding the start up of the Council for Nature\u2019s \u2018intelligence unit\u2019, to promote environmental coverage.\u00a0 That led to CoEnCo which led to the current UK NGO umbrella group Wildlife and Countryside Link.<\/p>\n

A fan of expertise being \u201con top, not on tap\u201d, of data, and of scientific rigour, as well as being an accomplished naturalist, Nicholson was also a WW2 and post-war Civil Servant familiar with the machinery of power, in which he played numerous senior roles.\u00a0 Seeing the political authority accorded to Science in post war Britain, Nicholson made sure the original Nature Conservancy had the status of a \u2018Scientific Service\u2019, in effect a Research Council.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cwe made a policy decision to write off the Natural History Societies, which we considered utterly useless for this new age of conservation\u201d \u2013 Max Nicholson<\/em><\/p>\n

A pragmatist, in 1980 Nicholson told<\/a> Charlie Pye-Smith and Phillip Lowe, \u201cthe important task was to vindicate the role of ecology as a science through serious quantitative and experimental research, and thus make possible the creation of a science-based conservation movement\u00a0 which in turn could lead to a broader professional environmental programme\u201d.<\/p>\n

Nicholson\u2019s vision was largely realised.\u00a0 There is now a large UK \u2018environmental management\u2019 policy community, with professional organisations.\u00a0 He also anticipated that for political reasons, the fledgling Conservancy would need a \u2018strong voluntary support movement\u2019, so he channeled funds into building up \u201ca complete network of County Naturalists Trusts\u201d [now The Wildlife Trusts].\u00a0 Again he succeeded but as he also said, \u201cwe made a policy decision to write off the Natural History Societies, which we considered utterly useless for this new age of conservation\u201d.<\/p>\n

At the time it was probably the best option but just as nobody foresaw that the voluntary conservation groups would find themselves fighting to mitigate wholesale change, from road building to intensive farming, blanket forestry and pollution \u2013 and despite their best efforts and significant growth in memberships and nature reserve estates, failing overall,<\/a>\u00a0 nor did they anticipate the arrival of attention-driven politics, or the national withering of nature knowledge or its consequences.<\/p>\n

In the C20th today\u2019s major nature and environment groups made it their task to find ways to persuade naturalists to join conservation efforts, and alert the wider public to the need for environmental action (in which they succeeded, at a conceptual level).\u00a0 It was not to introduce the wider public to natural history, as that didn\u2019t seem to be necessary.\u00a0 And nor, with the partial exception of the RSPB and birds, have they ever done so at scale.<\/p>\n

C21st: Calls For Natural History Revival<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018<\/em>Ernest Rutherford<\/em><\/a>\u00a0famously said “all science is either physics or stamp collecting”. No science has perhaps been a bigger victim of this attitude than natural history\u2019 \u2013 Jennifer Frazer<\/em><\/p>\n

In recent decades some scientists, especially those with \u2018field skills\u2019 (ie mainly, natural history knowledge) have become increasingly concerned that their own community is becoming estranged from nature, as an unintended consequence of its attempts to be increasingly \u2018rigorous\u2019, and more like technological sciences promising to lead to commercial applications and economic growth.\u00a0 From the 1970s, computing power and modelling enabled mathematicians to create and test hypotheses at the cutting edge of ecological research, so long as they had data. They had little need to tell one species from another, even if they met them while out for a walk.<\/p>\n

In 2007, American scientists and field naturalists Stephen Trombulak and Thomas Fleischner from Arizona pointed out that a 1994 survey \u00a0found \u2018a surprising number\u2019 of the American Society of Naturalists had themselves equated an interest in natural history with being an \u2018unsuccessful biologist\u2019. They issued a call for a \u2018renaissance in natural history<\/a>\u2019, started a journal<\/a>, and set up an institute<\/a> to promote it.\u00a0\u00a0 In 2014 Joshua Tewksbury and 17 other scientists, published Natural History\u2019s Place in Science and Society<\/em><\/a>, in the journal BioScience. They detailed a significant decline in natural history practice and called for its \u2018revitalisation\u2019.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s Natural History Revival Movement<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The most coherent and comprehensive cultural and social rationale I\u2019ve come across for a revival of natural history is not from the UK, or indeed Europe or North America but from China.\u00a0 At least so far as I can judge from this 2023 article<\/a> in Nature<\/em>\u2019s\u00a0 \u2018Humanities & Social Science Comunications\u2019, by Siyu Fu and Kristian Nielsen at Aarhus University in Denmark.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Huajie Liu of Peking Universty \u2013 find some of his (English Language) work <\/em>at ResearchGate.Net<\/em><\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n

Their account centres on the work of Liu Huajie at Peking University, whose thinking seems very relevant to many of the issues facing the nature movement in the UK.<\/p>\n

Siyu and Nielsen write that Liu is \u2018widely considered the main protagonist and public spokesperson of the NHRM\u2019 or Natural History Revival Movement in China.<\/p>\n

Liu wrote a book Living As A Naturalist<\/em><\/a> (only available in Chinese) in 2016.\u00a0 \u2018Living As A Naturalist\u2019 is a philosophy and a call for a movement, or a movement in practice, depending how you view it.\u00a0 Siyu and Nielsen write:\u00a0 \u2018the call for naturalism as a way of life applies to individual citizens and communities\u2019. \u2018Living As A Naturalist\u2019 also attracted a following of Chinese-speakers living overseas, through viewers of Phoenix TV.<\/em><\/p>\n

The authors begin Liu\u2019s story in the 1990s, when he \u2018became known as a staunch critic of pseudoscience\u2019 as opposed to \u2018science proper\u2019.\u00a0 But after wining an award to study it, \u2018Liu had modified or even reversed his original standpoint\u2019 and:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u2018around 2000, Liu Huajie began publishing academic and news articles, all of which called for a revival of natural history amidst a virtual flood of books in Chinese about nature and experiencing nature\u2019. <\/em><\/p>\n

In 2007 the Chinese Communist Party of the People\u2019s Republic of China (PRC)\u00a0 adopted the concept of building an \u2018Ecological Civilisation\u2019 or the EC, which became part of the Constitution in 2012. The rationale included avoiding \u2018progress traps\u2019 caused by environmental degradation.<\/p>\n

Siyu Fu and Kristian Nielsen say the NHRM \u2018entails an alternative vision of EC with associations around nature as an important political force\u2019, and with less emphasis on achieving it through science and technology.<\/p>\n

They add \u2018Liu Huajie\u00a0defends natural history as a legitimate and relevant mode of knowledge production\u2019 … and\u00a0 \u2018in contrast to how people in China usually understand science, the natural history approach emphasises inductive learning and emotional engagement with its subject matter, rather than hypothetical deduction and detachment\u2019.<\/p>\n

The paper describes how a large number of bird-watching clubs and local and national nature organisations have become established in China and their science or citizen science has influenced local conservation policies.\u00a0 Liu uses BOWU [Beauty, Observation, Understanding, Wonder] as an acronym to present or memorise the aims of the kind of natural history education that he advocates.\u00a0 In my opinion, that\u2019s also good advice for the nature movement in the UK.\u00a0 More about Liu\u2019s approach from the paper in Nature<\/em>:<\/p>\n

To really see nature, one will have to get to know it, which is why, according to Liu, naming natural entities is important.<\/em><\/p>\n

Liu compares knowing the names of plants and animals to knowing the names of famous actors. To appreciate cultural products such as Hollywood movies, we want to know the names of the actors in the movies. Similarly, to appreciate nature, we need to know the names of plants and animals in nature.<\/em><\/p>\n

Education in this case means practice and learning-by-doing, not formal training by following a well-defined curriculum. Liu cites the nineteenth century Swiss-born naturalist Louis Agassiz to make his point: \u2018Study nature, not books\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n

Learning how to practice natural history in the modern age, Liu suggests supervised training. Natural history training is different from professional training or on-the-job training. There are no specific aims or learning goals involved in the kind of natural history envisaged by Liu other than inciting curiosity about nature and love of nature.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019d recommend anyone interested in organising action to improve nature ability in the UK to read Siyu Fu and Kristian Nielsen\u2019s paper \u00a0Reviving natural history, building ecological civilisation: the philosophy and social significance of the Natural History Revival Movement in contemporary China<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Natural History\u2019s Particular Political Potential <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In my view we need both Ecology-the-science and Natural History but there are political reasons why Natural History is now particularly important for conservation.<\/p>\n

First, because it is socially accessible to the great majority of the public who are never going to become professional ecologists, and second, because it has a distinct psychology that is far more intuitive than the hypothesis-testing of formalised science.<\/p>\n

In a short 2022 article in Trends in Ecology & Evolution<\/em>, The psychology of natural history<\/a>,\u00a0 New Zealand researchers Kevin Burns and Jason Low lay out how Natural History has a distinct methodology called \u2018prediction error learning\u2019.<\/p>\n

This means learning from seeing something unexpected, suprising or remarkable, which is then assessed against prior knowledge, as opposed to the powerful but different process of setting an a priori<\/em> hypothesis and then testing it, which became the bedrock of \u2018scientific methods in the C20th (the \u2018hypotheticodeductive research paradigm\u2019).<\/p>\n

Because prediction-error learning is enabled by having a baseline knowledge of what\u2019s \u2018normal\u2019 in nature and how it works, people with nature ability (naturalists and others observing nature \u2018in the field\u2019) are at the frontline for nature conservation. They are most able to notice anything new, including disappearance or non-appearance of something familiar, or the appearance of something unfamiliar, such as the nature-gardeners who noticed the 2024 \u2018Silent Spring\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\nNatural History<\/td>\nEcological\/ env science<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Learning method<\/td>\nPrediction error<\/td>\nHypothesis testing<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Entry Requirements<\/td>\nNone<\/td>\nAcademic qualifications<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Primary communications<\/p>\n

Channel<\/td>\n

Track 1, System 1<\/a><\/p>\n

intuitive<\/td>\n

Track 2, System 2<\/a><\/p>\n

Professional analytical<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

Social open-ness<\/td>\nHigh<\/td>\nLow<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Cultural availability potential<\/td>\nHigh<\/td>\nLow<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Current UK comm\u2019s framing<\/td>\nA hobby\/ pastime<\/td>\nA science\/ discipline\/ profession<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Capacity to analyse invisible risks and processes (eg climate)<\/td>\nLow<\/td>\nHigh<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

(My interpretation)<\/em><\/p>\n

People who still directly depend on a particular feature of nature or plant or animal for their livelihood can of course also be in this position.\u00a0 For example the 1980s \u2018Waldsterben\u2019 or \u2018forest-decline\u2019 became a huge social and political issue, starting in Germany (see ch. 5 in The Dirty Man of Europe<\/em><\/a>).\u00a0 The first people to notice something was wrong (perhaps in the 1970s) were locals who went into old-growth forests to collect trimmings from felled Silver Fir or Tannen Baum<\/em><\/a>, the traditional Christmas tree, to make decorative wreaths.\u00a0 Rather than shiny green foliage, they found it was going sickly yellow or brown.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

1981 \u2013 \u2018Acid Rain\u2019 and \u2018Forest Decline\u2019 became a big political issue and scientific controversy in Germany (which still rumbles on, as effects of climate change worsen)<\/em><\/p>\n

The change was gradual but as these collectors only visited once a year, they noticed before professional foresters did (I asked a German scientist activist what the very first symptoms of forest decline had been, and he sardonically replied \u201can attack of blindness in foresters\u201d).\u00a0 Presumably the Christmas d\u00e9cor-makers found an alternative supply of foliage once it became unattractive.\u00a0 It was only when scientists proposed that air pollution might be to blame for the increasingly obvious decline of forests that it became a big public issue but it was prediction-error learning that first alerted the scientists.<\/p>\n

Similarly, from the 1950s to the 1970s, conservation managers, naturalists and field biologists had reported puzzling cases of reproductive problems in wildlife.\u00a0 These remained unexplained, and largely set aside by scientists who were investigated different hypotheses until the 1980s when US scientist Theo Colborn<\/a> realised that a common factor was concentration of (endocrine-disrupting)\u00a0 industrial chemicals in freshwater food chains.<\/p>\n

Another case, metioned by<\/a> Joshua Tewksbury\u2019s group, is the disastrous result of ignoring North American native people\u2019s traditional knowledge of the controlled use of fire in forest management.<\/p>\n

Beyond just noticing, getting to know a wild plant, animal or natural place enables people to form an emotional bond with them, so such folk are most likely to want to \u2018do something\u2019 about loss or damage.\u00a0\u00a0 Consequently, from a social-political point of view, conservation has a profound need for more Natural History ability across society.<\/p>\n

Natural History is also democratically participative in that it\u2019s socially porous and accessible in a way that most sciences are generally not.\u00a0 You can be a naturalist, and learn, teach or share a lot about Natural History, without having to be a scientist, pass exams or know a lot of \u2018scientific methods\u2019.\u00a0 Building on this could help strengthen nature\u2019s place in UK culture.<\/p>\n

Naturalists are society\u2019s sentries for nature, those who can sound the \u2018alarm call\u2019, as well as, alongside scientists, often being those with most understanding of what nature needs to function and survive.\u00a0\u00a0 With different organisation they could also be nature\u2019s rapid reaction force at the local level.<\/p>\n

All sections<\/p>\n

1 \u2013 Introduction And Nature Ability<\/p>\n

2 \u2013 Missing The Garden Opportunity<\/p>\n

3 \u2013 Signalling and Marking Moments<\/p>\n

4 \u2013 Nature Events in Popular Culture<\/p>\n

5 \u2013 Why Conservation Should Embrace Natural History<\/p>\n

6 \u2013 Organising Strategy and Ways And Means<\/p>\n

7 \u2013 Afterword: Aren\u2019t We Doing This Already?<\/p>\n

Contact: chris@campaignstrategy.co.uk<\/p>\n

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Section 5 \u00a0– Why Conservation Should Embrace Natural History download as pdf Natural History is undergoing something of a revival but over the last century it went from being a mainstay of UK culture to a backwater interest, as the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3179"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3441,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3179\/revisions\/3441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}