Common and threatened animal identification and conservation preferences among 6 to 12 year-old students

Abstract

Biodiversity loss is one of the biggest environmental issues in the world today and the biodiversity literacy of citizens can be key to counteracting this. Considering that children can be change agents and actively take part in decision-making from early years, we have assessed the native fauna identification skills of Primary School students (aged 6–12 years-old; n = 1975) from northern Spain along with their conservation preferences regarding common and threatened species. We have observed that, despite students’ species literacy increasing with the education level, it remains overall very low. Besides, the conservation preferences of children are not exclusively guided by conservation priorities and, although are partially explained by species identification accuracy, other factors also seem to skew these preferences. These findings point out the need to properly address knowledge of local fauna from the early school years and the urgent need to provide children with the appropriate training regarding the characteristics to be taken into account when selecting species for protection and ensure their conservation.

Keywords:

• Biodiversity education
• native fauna
• species identification
• species conservation
• primary school

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all the schools involved in this study, Equinoccio-Natura (association supporting environmental education) for helping us collect all the data, and the Provincial Council of Bizkaia for giving us the opportunity to conduct this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study has been partially supported by the Basque Government through the IKASGARAIA (Education, Culture and Sustainable Development) Research Group [IT1637-22].