30 days wild: development and evaluation of a large-scale nature engagement campaign to improve well-being

There is a need to increase people’s engagement with and connection to nature, both for human well-being and the conservation of nature itself. In order to suggest ways for people to engage with nature and create a wider social context to normalise nature engagement, The Wildlife Trusts developed a mass engagement campaign, 30 Days Wild. The campaign asked people to engage with nature every day for a month. 12,400 people signed up for 30 Days Wild via an online sign-up with an estimated 18,500 taking part overall, resulting in an estimated 300,000 engagements with nature by participants. Samples of those taking part were found to have sustained increases in happiness, health, connection to nature and pro-nature behaviours. With the improvement in health being predicted by the improvement in happiness, this relationship was mediated by the change in connection to nature

Urban Biodiversity, City-Dwellers and Conservation: How Does an Outdoor Activity Day Affect the Human-Nature Relationship?

Urban conservation education programs aim to increase knowledge and awareness towards biodiversity and to change attitudes and behaviour towards the environment. However, to date, few urban conservation education studies have evaluated to what extent these programs have managed to achieve their goals. In this study, we experimentally explored the influence of an urban conservation activity day on individual knowledge, awareness and actions towards biodiversity, in both the short and longer term

Exotic species, Experienced, and Idealized Nature

Recently Prévot-Julliard and colleagues presented a concept paper on biological conservation strategies using exotic species as a case study. They emphasized the difficulty of integrating conservation into a broad picture that accounts for public perception as well as scientific knowledge. We support this general call for better integration of society in conservation research, but we believe that the original framework might misguide conservation practices if wrongly interpreted. Our objective is to complement their paper and correct a few misleading points, by showing that (1) for regions of high endemicity “reservation” may be the best conservation practice, and does not prevent public participation, (2) aiming for broad societal agreement is valuable, but in some cases risky, and always complex, and (3) calling a harmful invasive species harmful shouldn’t be an issue. The Australian context provides us with many cases of the labeling of exotic species as harmful or not, using inputs from scientists, industry, and the public. Integration of social and scientific points of view can only improve conservation on the ground if it allows managers to use the ecological, economic and social impacts of exotic species to prioritize conservation actions in an operative way