Conservation Education Impacts of Animal Ambassadors in Zoos

Megan Marie Clifford-Clarke,Clare Frances Ellis,Katherine Whitehouse-Tedd

doi:10.3390/jzbg3010001

Abstract

To mitigate the effects of anthropogenic environmental impacts, conservation education (CE) aims to increase public awareness of biodiversity and encourage the uptake of pro-environmental behaviours (PEB). One way of achieving this goal is the use of controlled animal interactions with animal ambassadors to promote CE goals. This study aimed to determine how differing experiences with ambassador Humboldt penguins (Spheniscus humboldti) affected visitors’ knowledge of conservation actions (CA) and their likelihood to perform PEBs in a UK zoo. A quasi-experimental repeated measures questionnaire was used to investigate this aim. Visit types were categorised as (a) ‘penguin parade’, (b) ‘animal encounter’, (c) ‘exhibit viewing’ and (d) a ‘control’ groups. A Kruskal–Wallis test was used to determine if responses to rating scale items related to PEBs differed according to experience. No significant (p > 0.05) differences were detectable between groups. Qualitative data provided in open ended questions relating to CAs were coded into themes and the percentage of responses were calculated for each theme. Whilst the ‘exhibit viewing’ group mentioned sustainable fish significantly more (p = 0.017) than the ‘control’ group, no significant difference was found for any other pair-wise comparison (p > 0.05 in all cases). Overall, this study highlights that zoo visitors gained specific conservation-based knowledge and had higher behavioural intentions towards PEBs than they previously had. However, no evidence was found to suggest that animal encounters improved CE outcomes. To ensure best practice is followed and CE outcomes are considered equally alongside ambassador animal welfare concerns, further research is recommended.

Highlights

Conservation education (CE) aims to increase public awareness of biodiversity, including the environmental issues facing the natural world; conservation education (CE) activities often involve imparting knowledge of actions that can be undertaken to mitigate these problems [1,2,3].Given that the unsustainable consumption of natural resources is a significant factor in climate change and biodiversity loss [4], changing people’s behaviours and encouraging them to think carefully about their consumption choices may make a significant difference to reducing anthropogenic environmental impacts [5]
To explore the impact that different types of experiences at the zoo may have on intention to perform pro-environmental behaviours (PEB), four types of zoo visits were identified prior to the start of the study and participants were categorised into one of the four groups according to the visit type that they had chosen to engage with during their visit
A numerical fishing is a key focus of the Twycross Zoo’s Penguin CE programmes, these results provide increase in the intention to perform PEBs was observed between pre- and post-visit, sugpromising evidence that animal ambassadors and CE materials can positively influence gesting the zoo visit positively impacted

Summary

Introduction

Conservation education (CE) aims to increase public awareness of biodiversity, including the environmental issues facing the natural world; CE activities often involve imparting knowledge of actions that can be undertaken to mitigate these problems [1,2,3].Given that the unsustainable consumption of natural resources is a significant factor in climate change and biodiversity loss [4], changing people’s behaviours and encouraging them to think carefully about their consumption choices may make a significant difference to reducing anthropogenic environmental impacts [5]. Conservation education (CE) aims to increase public awareness of biodiversity, including the environmental issues facing the natural world; CE activities often involve imparting knowledge of actions that can be undertaken to mitigate these problems [1,2,3]. Conservation education is subsequently aligned to the rationale that an increased environmental understanding and awareness promotes more positive attitudes and emotions toward conservation. This can lead to increased knowledge of conservation actions (CA), actions that can generally support the conservation of biodiversity such as ‘protected areas’ or ‘sustainable resourcing’. Designed CE has the potential to enhance visitor experiences as well as encourage pro-environmental behaviours [10]

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