A murmuration of starlings, once a common sight but unfortunately increasingly rare as their numbers in England alone declined by 87% between 1967 and 2015. Photo credit: © Daniel Biber, Germany, Shortlist, Professional, Natural World & Wildlife, 2018 Sony World Photography Awards.

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How accurately do we remember the past? While we might remember big events like weddings and birthdays, it’s sometimes a little harder to notice the gradual changes. For example, can you recall how the number of How accurately do we remember the past? While we might remember big events like weddings and birthdays, it’s sometimes a little harder to notice the gradual changes. For example, can you recall how the number of garden birds has changed since you were growing up? When biological change goes unnoticed, this may lead to ‘shifting baseline syndrome’ (SBS), a phenomenon based in psychology where we forget past conditions and believe current conditions are completely normal. Over several generations of environmental decline a significant amount of change might occur without us realising, and we might not see the need restore it. This can potentially reduce support for conservation and lead to the setting of less ambitious management targets.

In our paper, we focussed on garden birds as a case study to explore evidence for SBS in the UK. Using online questionnaires, we asked the In our paper we focussed on garden birds as a case study to explore evidence for SBS in the UK. Using online questionnaires we asked the public about their memories of population abundance and trends for 10 species, both at the time of the survey and when they were 18 years old. Responses were then matched according to the age and location of the participant to a long-term biological dataset provided by the BTO. We found evidence of SBS as younger people were less aware of past ecological conditions and found that younger people were also less likely to prioritise conservation of species in decline.

Our results point towards an interesting contradiction, that while younger people are increasingly emerging as pro-environmental advocates around the world, younger people may also be less able to perceive long-term ecological change. In order to prevent ongoing impacts of SBS we support the need to encourage more frequent experiences of nature, bridge the communication gap between generations and encourage the sharing of rich and limitless stories about the past.