Assessing the impact of complimentary wildflower seed packets as an outreach tool for promoting pollinator conservation at a zoo

Abstract

Wildflower seeds have been distributed by zoos and other organizations to facilitate native plant gardening and promote pollinator conservation, but the effectiveness of these campaigns has not been formally evaluated. We use Toronto Zoo members as a sample population to assess the efficacy of distributing wildflower seeds versus informative material alone to encourage pollinator gardening habits. Through a post-treatment questionnaire, we found that the majority of recipients planted their seeds and were more likely to read accompanying interpretive material, but did not indicate greater future intentions to create pollinator habitat than those who had just read informative material.