Helping nature
As part of the Big Green Week, a look at nature conservation volunteering which supports and protects nature.
Hello and welcome to the latest Compassionate Nature article, which continues the volunteering theme from the previous article, this time with a focus on nature conservation.
“to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”
In 1990 the unmanned spacecraft Voyager 1 was nearly 4 billion miles away from Earth, at the edge of our planetary system and took an iconic photograph looking back at our planet, which appears as a very, very small blue dot. Carl Sagan, in his 1994 book Pale Blue Dot, sums up what that perspective provides upon our planet and its uniqueness in being the only known planet (so far) which harbours life as advanced as Earth. For Sagan that image underlined the importance of our collective responsibility towards each other and towards the planet.
The Big Green Week (8th to 16th June) is an annual UK event started in 2021 by The Climate Coalition, an umbrella charity which includes organisations and other charities such as the National Trust and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). The week highlights community action and groups involved with addressing climate change and protecting nature. Volunteering numbers within organisations like the RSPB and The Wildlife Trust are collated by the UK government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), which reports an increasing number of volunteers working within nature conservation across England, rising by 27% between 2000 and 2021. While the trend has had downturns, between 2000-2001 due to controls around foot and mouth disease and in 2020 due to covid restrictions, the overall positive trend in nature conservation volunteering contrasts with the data in the previous Compassionate Nature article which showed overall volunteering levels in England were decreasing.
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Three recently published psychology papers have explored the experience of volunteering within nature conservation, considering volunteers motivations and the relationship between volunteers and the organisations they work within.
Experience
A 2024 paper from Alison Collins and colleagues considered the relationship and experience of volunteers working within woodland conservation in the North West of England. The study specifically looked at older volunteers, with the authors highlighting that data indicates the majority of volunteers are aged 55 or over, a trend likely to increase as the UK population continues to become an increasingly older one. The study explored both the expectations of volunteers and the expectations of them from the organisation they volunteer within. The study data came from site visits to three volunteering groups involved with woodland management, which provided responses from 29 participants, who were mainly men and retired. This was followed up with focus groups consisting of 17 of the participants.
The authors identified a number of themes from the data. Under the theme of fairness, the volunteers expressed concern that they could perhaps be seen as a form of cheap labour, a perception they felt was more likely to come from third parties and not the organisations they volunteered with. Some were also concerned that they may impact the employment of paid workers. In this context, they saw volunteering as a sociable way of completing labour intensive work, while paid workers performed more specialist roles.
Under the theme of skills the volunteers had an expectation of learning, with appropriate support from others, while the theme of flexibility highlighted that the participants were keen that volunteering did not feel like work. This was linked to their happiness at not having to take responsibility to lead or manage the activities. The volunteers appreciated the structure to their time that regular volunteering provided and that by taking part they felt needed, although they did not want to feel pressured into attending. Notably many of the volunteers undertook multiple volunteering roles.
The volunteering organisers expressed few expectations of the volunteers. They reported being cautious of making demands and took into account the abilities of the volunteers during activities. They did not expect any prior skills or knowledge from volunteers, although did expect an understanding of the importance of the role and responsibilities towards health and safety given some of the tools used in the woodland. Overall the organisers wanted the volunteers to have a positive experience, to feel supported by social interactions and motivated by the variety of tasks they could perform.
While a small scale qualitative study and with themes which are the researchers interpretation of the participants comments, I thought the views of the organisers and volunteers were interesting in some their overlaps.
Nature connection
Rhys Furlong, Jenny Hallam and Chris Barnes from the University of Derby 2024 paper looks at the role of nature connection within nature conservation volunteering. The qualitative study involved 10 participants, 4 men and 6 women, who volunteered in different types of conservation work, some in woodland and some supporting specific animal species. The study also considered the impact of covid upon the volunteers experience and nature connectedness.
Three themes were identified by the authors, relating to the sensation of nature, deriving stability from nature and relationship changes with nature. Noticing different natural stimuli, through the various senses, was supportive of the volunteers sense of nature connection and their appreciation of nature. Some felt that they paid greater attention to nature during covid, while being in nature provided a relaxing and calming environment during the uncertainty of the early stages of the pandemic. This was further reflected in the theme of stability, where nature helped to proved a sense of meaning and perspective. A sense of hope was also taken from the changing of seasons and the perpetual state of nature which acted as a buffer to the uncertainty. The volunteers noticed the benefits to nature conservation from reduced human activity, which also provided hope, this time towards the recovery of nature. Within the third theme of their relationship with nature, some participants highlighted feeling greater environmental concern alongside this awareness during the restrictions, leading some to feel an urgency and desire to do more to protect nature.
Again it is a small sample of volunteers and the analysis is an interpretation of their responses, however I thought it interesting how during the covid period, the volunteers found that nature fostered hope towards both the pandemic and recovery from environmental damage.
Motivating connections
Another 2024 paper by Charlotte Sextus and colleagues at Massey University in New Zealand explores what motivates people to volunteer in nature conservation and the connections that builds. The study is a mixed methods design using quantitaive and qualitative data from both volunteers and nature conservation organisations from the Manawatū region.
The study used a survey completed by 101 volunteers, of whom just over third regularly volunteered at least once a week. The sample consisted of 53% female volunteers and 54% of the volunteers were aged 60 years or older. The survey included looking at what motivated the volunteers, with the actual activities undertaken appearing quite low down for reasons to volunteer, with enjoyment being the top reason (61%). Enjoyment had a clear influence upon the volunteers levels of commitment, such that the more enjoyable the volunteering was the more likely the volunteers were commit to it regularly and continue to do so over a longer period. The respondents reported the same top four motivations for starting and for continuing to volunteer - caring for nature, helping the local community, connecting to nature and being active outdoors.
In addition the authors interviewed 21 representatives from conservation organisations for whom the volunteers work. The authors identified from this qualitative data that the organisation all felt they always had a need for more volunteers and sometimes it was hard to get volunteers to undertake the less desirable tasks, with the succession of volunteers within leadership roles a recurring problem. The representatives felt that the nature conservation work provided the volunteers with meaning and purpose, supported by a connection with nature, attachment to the places they volunteered in and the social interactions. The need to support volunteers with choices of activities and to help develop new skills or utilise existing skills was recognised by the representatives as important. They also highlighted how the volunteers collective action is making a difference within the nature conservation work.
Again some of the respondent responses are open to interpretation and the data may be specific within a regional context. However it does align with other research on volunteers motivations and illustrates further several key aspects that lead to people volunteering and to continue to do so.
Volunteers play a key role within nature conservation and it appears an area of volunteering that continues to attract support within the UK. The three papers all help to provide insight into the experience of volunteers within nature conservation, how they can be supported and motivated by the organisations they work within.
Connection has been highlighted as pivotal to volunteering in this article and the previous Compassionate Nature article - the connection of volunteers to nature, the social connection to each other and the connection with the ethos and aims of the voluntary organisation.
Another key factor appears to be the balance between the needs of the conservation organisations to the enjoyment and the commitment to take part by volunteers. Get that right and you have a committed group of individuals with various personal motivations for being involved but all with one key goal.
That is, to help protect a part of that little, pale blue dot we call home.
Thanks ever so much for reading this article. All the research reviewed are open access studies, so are freely available to read in detail via the links in the article or from the references below. If you think the article would be helpful to someone else please do share on, it is a freely available public post.
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References - all open access
Collins, A. M., Bingley, A. F., Varey, S., & Oaks, R. (2024). Negotiating the volunteer role: a qualitative study of older volunteers’ experiences in woodland conservation. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 35(3), 483-506. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2023.2250257
Furlong, R., Hallam, J., & Barnes, C. (2024). Conservation volunteers’ experiences of connecting with nature during the COVID-19 pandemic: an interpretative phenomenological analysis. Discover Psychology, 4(1), 30.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s44202-024-00144-3
Sextus, C. P., Hytten, K. F., & Perry, P. (2024). Volunteer commitment and longevity in community-based conservation in Aotearoa New Zealand. Kōtuitui: New Zealand Journal of Social Sciences Online, 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/1177083X.2024.2335995
Interesting read Chris