Taylor Henry
Pronouns: She/her
Research Mentor(s): Ethan Shirley
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Earth and Environmental Sciences / LSA
Program:
Authors: Taylor Henry, Ethan Shirley
Session: Session 4: 1:40 pm – 2:30 pm
Poster: 31
Abstract
Conservation paleobiology focuses on using biological data to investigate fossil records and current species’ structures to better define extinction events and promote conservation. Researchers, however, have not investigated attitudes about extinction, conservation, and climate change and how they are influenced by learning about fossils and extinction events in the past. The relationship between opinions on past extinctions, through fossils or climate data, and what people think about current extinction and climate change is not well understood. In Uganda, there is an abundance of both ape fossils and endangered ape species such as gorillas, making it a unique location to conduct this research. We designed an outreach program for 983 Ugandan schoolchildren and surveys for 494 university students in a paleontology class at Michigan to better understand the relationship between attitudes about the past and current environmental problems. Here we demonstrate the differences between the surveyed attitudes in Uganda and the USA. Gender differences proved to be prevalent in the USA responses but not in the Uganda surveys, possibly indicating a difference in cultural gender roles in society. Samples in both countries demonstrated a decreased sensitivity overall to current extinction events, showing after the class a Likert-scale increase in agreement with affirmations that extinction is natural, rather than human-caused. There is some evidence that the differences in vocabulary used by local people in Uganda and Ugandan researchers could contribute to miscommunication in urgency of conservation to prevent extinction. Regardless of linguistic issues, these results illustrate the importance of adapting educational programs to the context of students and a focus on deconstructing misconceptions so that education about fossils can positively contribute to students’ views on preventing extinction through conservation and resolving other modern environmental issues.
