Conservation Biology: A New Hope?

In the mission oriented discipline of conservation biology, as one small problem is put to rest, new ones spring up faster than a game of whack a mole: Extinction. Habitat loss. Invasive species. Overpopulation. Overconsumption. Climate change. Pessimism, it seems, is pervasive. While physicists excitedly discover new particles and planets, conservation biologists quantify the rate of biodiversity loss. So it is not surprising that practitioners have begun discussing whether hopelessness is an impediment to disciplinary success. In 2010, Ron Swaisgood, an applied ecologist at the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research, cowrote an article for BioScience entitled "The culture of conservation biologists: Show me the hope!" (doi:10.1525/ bio.2010.60.8.8) "I myself was grappling with feelings of helplessness and frustration" from work "in the trenches" with endangered species, says Swaisgood. Then, at the 2009 Society for Conservation Biology conference in Beijing, he was struck by the mood of despair in the discipline as a whole. A common refrain heard from young attendees was, "It's good, it's interesting, but it's so depressing!" Swaisgood's paper on the topic took shape during the flight home, as he swapped early drafts with coauthor James Sheppard a few seats away. Hopelessness was something lurking just below the surface, says Swaisgood, "and it just felt like we needed to rip off the Band Aid and give this thing some air." The airing of hopelessness as a potential discipline wide problem in conservation biology generated vigorous debate. In a 2011 exchange in BioScience, fellow conservation biologists Michael Patten and Brenda Smith Patten countered that in solving conservation problems, "Hope will not get us there, but good science, straight talk, and honest dialogue may." Swaisgood and Sheppard responded that they were not advocating false hope but rather "a commonsense balance of realism based on good science with a rejuvenated sense of purpose and aspiration," recommending conservation psychology as a disciplinary tool. People now look at Swaisgood's nametag at conferences and refer to him as "the hope guy," he laughs, but his message is no joke and has gained some traction. For example, the 2016 North American Congress for Conservation Biology in Madison, Wisconsin, held a session entitled Bright Spots in Conservation. Co organizers Clare Aslan, of Northern Arizona University, and Melissa Lucash, of Portland State University, say their 2015 cohort of Wilburforce Fellows was struck by the idea of focusing on bright spots. "We often focus on the negatives," says Lucash, but their leadership and communication training reminded them of "all these people doing these amazing things." "We wondered, 'why are we all so hungry for this?" says Aslan. They are hoping to synthesize lessons from conservation successes. Popular storytelling efforts about hope in conservation have been launched on Twitter by @ConservOptimism and with hashtags #oceanoptimism and #Earthoptimism. But aside from the "feel good" factor, what does science say about the need for a shift toward messages of hope in conservation biology? Does hopelessness cause attrition or stifle the attraction of new minds to the field? Does hopelessness make mental health issues an occupational hazard? And how do stories of hope versus despair affect engagement with the public? Within conservation biology, these questions remain empirically untested, but research in marketing, politics, and social and health psychology may provide insights. In a 2012 meta analysis published in Annals of Behavioral Medicine, social and health psychologist Kristel Gallagher, then at Kent State University and now at Thiel College in Pennsylvania, examined how message framing influences health related behaviors. She and coauthor John A. Updegraff, of Kent State University, found that to encourage low risk behaviors such as improved eating habits and exercise, positive, gain framed messages "Exercising may help you lose weight" were more powerful than negative, lossframed messages "Not exercising regularly can make you gain weight" But negative, loss framed messages were more effective when behavioral change was perceived as riskier, such as in attending cancer screenings. Message framing and its relationship with risk stem from a Nobel Prize winning economic model called prospect theory. If relevant to conservation biology, it suggests that the efficacy of a focus on gain (hope) versus loss (pessimism) may depend on the risk of what is at stake. Conservation psychologists suggest there is no one size fits all strategy for pessimistic versus hopeful cognitive strategies or explanatory styles. In their book,  Understanding and Promoting Human Care for Nature, Susan Clayton and Gene Myers write that optimism has well known benefits, but there are downsides, too: "Optimists, like everyone, are prone to use confirmation bias in selecting which information to attend to. Pessimists, on the other hand, may be more realistic but at some cost to motivation and psychological health." Perhaps, as Swaisgood hypothesized in his 2010 paper, conservation biology needs both empowered optimists and grounded pessimists. It is a wide open area for research.