Saving Species: Shining a light on how you can help save our planet
Written by Carly Naundorff
We’ve all heard about the topic of climate change one way or another, whether it be in an introductory environmental studies course or on the news labeled as “global warming”. Certainly, climate change is a huge issue that deserves attention. Yet, it often overshadows issues such as biodiversity loss that are just as serious if not more pressing.
Though we cannot address biodiversity loss without tackling climate change, it is equally unrealistic to tackle climate change without addressing biodiversity loss. Protecting and restoring the ecosystems of our one and only home, Earth, can help us reduce the magnitude of climate change and surmount its impacts.
This is where my project came in! Not only are few government officials taking the initiative to assess the issue of biodiversity loss, but few every-day average people seem to know little about the importance of biodiversity and the crises in which it’s facing.
Besides outdoorsy, wildlife-loving people, few people are aware of the importance of biodiversity as well as the major contributors to it’s loss. Often, the people that are knowledgeable on the topic are unaware of personal changes they can make in order to preserve biodiversity. Additionally, the doom and gloom pressure they may feel is often what makes them believe that they won’t be able to create a substantial change.
I hoped to restore this common hopeless feeling by creating a website titled “Saving Species” which I attempted to frame in a bright, positive light. This website was created to allow people to easily learn more about what biodiversity is, how we benefit from it, what we do that threatens it, and actions they can take to help restore biodiversity right outside of their windows or thousands of miles away. Throughout my website, I utilized what I learned during my Environmental Communication’s course and tools mentioned in the textbook Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere by Pezzullo and Cox.
As a digital environmental advocacy campaign, my website acts as a source to educate and empower our global community to take direct action toward preserving biodiversity (Pezzullo & Cox, p. 231). The main aim of my campaign is to raise awareness of biodiversity’s offerings to all life on Earth in hopes of spurring inspiration to act on preserving it, whether it entails being aware of everyday habits or reaching out to government officials demanding change. Through the use of multiple interactive links signaled by yellow text I was able to create a sense of hypermediacy in hopes of making additional information be as easily accessible as possible (Pezzullo & Cox, p. 236). Here are three more ways, inspired by Pezzullo and Cox, in which I implemented this vision:
Alert - By naming the environmental issue and notifying the public of the environmental concerns relating to it, I hoped to raise awareness and draw attention to the problem for the first step of my advocacy campaign.
Amplify - I used this tactic by first sharing my website with close friends and family, then on Facebook to become accessible to older adults, To instagram to capture a younger audience, and eventually through email to ecotourism organizations such as Mandari Panga Jungle Expeditions and Santa Lucia Ecolodge.
Engage - Inspired by this type of grassroots activism, I included a “Take Action” page (with clickable titles!) featuring a bottom-up site courtesy of the Defenders of Wildlife. By doing so, these easy-to-use online tools enable them to share and start their own petitions on social media.
By using these tactics, I was able to generate 60 total unique visitors (my goal was 10!) and 339 total page views altogether. One of my most daunting yet exciting measurable goals assessed reposts of my website by two ecotourism organizations, both with missions supporting conservation. Though I only heard back from Mandari Panga, they sent an email reply sharing that they will promote my website once they update their own in the coming weeks!
During the creation of my website, I was also able to come up with an additional measurable goal in the form of a feedback box (and I received 3 lengthy responses!). If I were to do anything differently, I would love to have found more ways to distribute my website as well as make it more enticing in order to increase the average number of page views per visit.
Overall, this was a great learning experience that pushed me to become a better communicator and in the end, I think it worked! This website will be open to the public for the foreseeable future and I can’t wait to see how it continues to grow and inspire. Lastly, I want to thank my friends and family (and you!) for taking the time to view my website. I hope that I was able to capture our beautiful planet in a bright light - one in which has inspired you to take small steps toward protecting biodiversity.
References:
About Us. Defenders of Wildlife. (2021). https://defenders.org/about.
Mandari Panga Yasuni Jungle Expeditions - Ecuador Amazon Tours. Mandaripanga. (n.d.). https://www.mandaripanga.com/.
Naundorff, C. (2021, May 14). Saving Species. https://earthsbiodiversity.weebly.com/.
Pezzullo, P. C., Cox, R. (2018). Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere (5th Edition).
United Nations. (2019, May 6). UN Report: Nature's Dangerous Decline 'Unprecedented'; Species Extinction Rates 'Accelerating' – United Nations Sustainable Development. United Nations. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/nature-decline-unprecedented-report/.
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