General Discussion
Shifting baseline syndrome: How we forget nature.
Benny, what the hell are you talking about? How can we forget about nature?
Quick example.
There used to be 30 000 000 bison in North America. Roaming over 22 ecosystems and 9.4 mill km2.
Today there are only 2% of them left, restricted to only 1% of their historical range.
Now, if you could go to a North American National Parks and see some bison, you could think: "Awesome, so much nature & wildlife".
However, this is only a fraction of the abundance we used to have. This phenomenon is called Shifting baseline syndrome.
Basically, when people get used to things getting worse without realizing it because they compare to what they've seen recently instead of how things used to be.
So we simply forget about nature and how abundant it used to be.
Why is tackling shifting baseline syndrome crucial?
1. We settle for mediocre restoration goals because we got used to the wrong standards.
2. Species like bison can help us tackle climate change (restoring only a fraction of bison (15%) would add 595 Mt CO2 annually to prairie ecosystem storage)
3. Due to the low standard of intact nature, we risk losing more and more until none is left.
1 Action you can take:
When you reflect, read, rewild, study, restore, etc., always figure out what the baseline of the animal population, ecosystem etc. used to be before we humans messed it up.
Afterward, figure out how to get closer to that rather than a number from the last decade.
Let us not forget nature & tackle the shifting baseline syndrome!
P.S. Have you heard of the shifting baseline syndrome before? I have also heard it called frog soup, put a frog in water and slowly boil you get frog soup, put a frog in boiling water and he jumps out.