Robin Who? Bird Species Knowledge of German Adults

Knowledge of species is the basis for involvement in biodiversity awareness and protection. For the first time, we investigated how bird species knowledge is spread among adults in Germany in a representative study. It was shown that of the 15 species presented, only 6 were recognized on average, an...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Animals (Basel) 2022-08, Vol.12 (17), p.2213
Main Authors: Enzensberger, Pirmin, Schmid, Benjamin, Gerl, Thomas, Zahner, Volker
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adults
Biodiversity
biological education
bird species knowledge
Birds
connectiveness with nature
Ecosystem biology
Environmental psychology
Identification
Knowledge
Motivation
Nature conservation
Protected species
representative survey
Skills
Sociodemographics
species identification skills
Taxonomy
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Summary:Knowledge of species is the basis for involvement in biodiversity awareness and protection. For the first time, we investigated how bird species knowledge is spread among adults in Germany in a representative study. It was shown that of the 15 species presented, only 6 were recognized on average, and 4.5% of the tested persons did not recognize any species at all. Only 0.5% knew all presented species. Younger participants in particular knew significantly fewer species than the group over 60 years. We also tested if species knowledge has an impact on the motivation to act for nature conservation. In this study, knowledge of species correlated directly with the willingness to take action for species protection, e.g., through donating money for proactive nature conservation. Simply being in nature was meaningless for the test result. However, if one was actively involved with birds, e.g., via bird counts or bird feeding, species knowledge was significantly better.
ISSN:2076-2615
2076-2615
DOI:10.3390/ani12172213