Studies Show Kids Expect Less and Less From Nature

Ah, how soon we forget — our beloved teddy bear, our first big crush, the childhood woods we lost when a new suburb was built. In most cases, such forgetfulness is harmless, but when it comes to the environment, it leads to a progressive lowering of expectations that may seal the fate of an impoverished planet.

It's called the "shifted baseline syndrome" and a recent report shows it's happening far faster than anticipated.

Here's how it works: We each accept as normal what we remember from our childhood, and thus, collectively, we come to expect less from the environment with each passing generation.  This loss of information about the ways things used to be — "planetary amnesia" — can occur so quickly that young adults today may not have any idea that, once, you could go into the wilderness far away from the sight of buildings or the sounds of engines.

Indeed, the younger generation may never even have heard of a species that was a staple of their grandfather's livelihood. Cod is a case in point. The namesake of Massachusetts' famous Cape was once so abundant that fishermen claimed they could scoop the fish up with baskets. But cod populations collapsed in the 1990s. 

As fishery managers work to rebuild the stock, what levels should they aim for? Official "statistics" reach back to the 1970s and show a population of about half a million metric tons (compared to a few tens of thousands today). But a study looking at historic fishing logbooks and journals calculated a population in the 1850s of over one million tons — twice as much as the official baseline. Use of modern data alone would therefore lead to grossly unambitious plans to restore the fishes' numbers in New England.

This syndrome also rears its ugly head on land, where we have forgotten that the ground shook when bison roamed the plains and that the skies grew dark for hours at a time as flock of passenger pigeons flew overhead. Our grandchildren may not remember the exquisite colors of fall, or summer nights that required a sweatshirt.

An emerging field called historical ecology seeks to document, via historical research, the way ecosystems used to be — an endeavor that gains importance by the minute as wilderness and animal populations disappear. But, in addition to those archives, there is also a wealth of information in the stories of our elders and even in the remote corners of our own memories. I'd be curious to hear how many of you have experienced a shifted baseline, and how you think we could best capture information about the past and put it to use. Please share your stories here.

photo credit: Borderlys