cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/46293279
From Parklane Landscapes
Shifting Baseline Syndrome (SBS) is what happens when we forget how vibrant the natural world used to be. Each generation grows up with a more depleted environment and calls it “normal,” simply because it’s all they’ve ever known.
Think about walking through a park and thinking, “This seems healthy.” But maybe 30 years ago that same park had twice as many birds, wildflowers, or insects. If you never saw that version, you don’t feel the loss - and that quiet forgetting becomes the new baseline. Over time, we start accepting degraded ecosystems as normal.
Researchers warn that this shift lowers our expectations, increases our tolerance for decline, and reduces our urgency to protect what’s left.
What helps:
Intergenerational conversations that reconnect us with what nature used to be.
Direct experiences with nature that sharpen our awareness of change.
Remembering (knowing) the past is the first step to restoring the future.
Not a sponsor, I don’t think it’s an AI graphic, and I think it has something important to say. Plus it does have an owl. We can’t save our animals if we don’t save them the spaces they need to thrive.
Sorry, what do you mean by that?
The periphery of a forest has the luxury and burden of maintaining all of its branches on one side. Light reaches the entirety of a trees breadth and height there, so leaves and needles and branches do not cease to grow, unless their light is blocked out by something taller. So it follows that if you see an area on the exterior of a forest where the branches sit only at great height, that indicates logging and deforestation. Human tampering.
No longer is the wind broken, and no longer can animals flit and hide amongst the infinite branches encircling the place. It is effectively forever disturbed. A biome fundamentally altered. The howling forests of the modern era are a largely human invention. And not one that I like.
Healthy and full
https://c.pxhere.com/photos/25/bd/mountains_view_forest_autumn_alpine_beautiful_meadow_color-1442185.jpg!s
Human tampering. (Or possibly disease in this case)
https://www.treehugger.com/thmb/yyIoOhfdg3RfbL-0Y1VJWXq7x20=/1024x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/__opt__aboutcom__coeus__resources__content_migration__treehugger__images__2019__06__boreal-bfe6d7f7bd3e41ea896ab890aa632137.jpg