https://forms.gle/4XQcdvvFVTg4s3BDA

After learning about various climate communication strategies, theories, barriers to engagement and ultimately pondering what the best opportunities and modalities for communicating are- I am left marvelling at the power of storytelling. For this course, Communication for Climate Action we were tasked with analyzing, creating, and recreating climate content. In the first part of this assignment I dove into the concept of species loneliness presented by Robin Wall Kimmerer, which describes the apparent decline in ability of people to name and connect with the species around them (Kimmerer, 2014). This concept hit home for me and provoked me to think about whether being able to simply name species, especially as an environmental professional is integral to conservation and climate action work, and further what we can learn from Indigenous peoples and languages that recognize species beyond just a name. However interesting, I realized (through feedback) that this concept overarched the capacity I had for this assignment and for the remix of this communication piece in part two I should simplify the scope. This led me to think about how I could integrate little tidbits or fun facts I knew about Canadian species into an interactive piece of media. 

In my undergraduate degree I took a course that involved memorizing the taxonomy of species across North America. There are hundreds of orders and families with 15-odd letters in each name such as “phoenicopteriformes” , the order in which flamingoes are categorized. Marginally tedious at the time, I now enjoy being able to classify and identify bird species and often get messages from friends and family with images of birds they see asking for identification. Before the course I hadn’t considered how many animals I “knew” but week after week I was surprised at all the new ones I was learning about and how many played important roles in their respective ecosystems. The names and orders of the families I was able to remember most quickly had interesting facts associated with them. 

For the remix of my assignment, inspired from my own experience and the study I referenced in assignment 3 regarding findings of “wildlife quizzes’ ‘ done in the Netherlands I decided to make a quiz. Using the platform Google Forms and fair use google images, along with species specific information I have acquired in my lifetime I created a short quiz. For the scope of the assignment I decided to focus primarily on mammals, along with a couple birds. Initially I set up the quiz as a short answer format, but decided to change it to a multiple choice format to help aid participants in finding the correct answer. I included a mix of what I perceive to be more commonly known animals, such as polar bears and lesser known ones such as Pronghorns. My goal is to raise awareness of the amount of biodiversity we have in Canada, along with which animals are at risk. The format I chose was limiting as the educational tidbit (or small story) that is included with each animal is only shown at the end of the quiz with the results- rather than directly after an answer is submitted which may make the respondent less likely to read. Initially I had planned to include 20 species, including plants, animals and insects. This however became too big and I instead focused on just animals, mostly mammals that I thought were more outwardly interesting.  With only several species in my quiz, there is opportunity to add many more, however I wanted the quiz to not be time consuming and leave a sense of wonderment as I had experienced in my previous course to imagine what other animals exist.

As the Hooykaas et al., (2019) study found that school aged children performed worse than the general population, my target audience for this quiz is youth in middle school. I have reached out to a few friends who are secondary teachers and asked if they would be interested in sharing my quiz with their students. To increase accessibility, I made an effort to refrain from fully scientific language so that the material could be understood by people not immersed in academia, while still using correct words to describe the animals presented. Additionally, the questions, answers and information could be transcribed to audio or printed off to reduce the need of a computer or smartphone. I wanted the quiz to be educational without being discouraging, hoping the participants would learn any animals they did not know about before either through the visual, or be compelled to learn more by the “fun facts” presented at the end. This concept could be easily reformatted to posters with an image and tidbits of information, or expanded to wildlife professionals, or hobby birders, hunters etc, who hold stories and information about Canadian wildlife and be able to add their own facts. Further, I have no doubt that there are many Indigenous stories and knowledge of local species that would add a more holistic understanding of the ecological importance of animals in Canada.

Climate action is a wide ranging archetype- and I believe that the intentionality that comes with learning names of species falls under conservation and climate change action despite it maybe not being outwardly actionable. With the plethora of knowledge and information that can be accessed online, it is amazing how much you can learn about animals without ever having to physically go find and potentially disturb that animal. My hope is that if I can share this quiz prototype with Jr high aged students it might encourage them to be curious about what other animals exist, and what niche they fill. A next step would be to ask participants to share an animal of their own choice, and an associated fact or story of that species. This may be a small step in comparison to Kimmerer’s (2017) idea of referring to animals and nature as “ki” or kin, but I see it as a realistic way to potentially encourage people, especially youth to consider more of the biodiversity around them and call them by their Western name rather than just disregard a brown bird flying by and instead by curious of how that bird might survive in winter or where it goes at night. 

References

Hooykaas, M. J., Schilthuizen, M., Aten, C., Hemelaar, E. M., Albers, C. J., & Smeets, I. (2019). Identification skills in biodiversity professionals and laypeople: A gap in species literacy. Biological Conservation, 238, 108202. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2019.108202

Kimmerer, R. W. (2014). Returning the gift. Returning the Gift, 7(2), 18–24. https://www.humansandnature.org/returning-the-gift-article-177.phpKimmerer, R. W. (2017). Speaking of nature: Finding language that affirms our kinship with the natural world. Orion Magazine. https://orionmagazine.org/article/speaking-of-nature/