Conservationists are using new techniques to increase awareness

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1 Conservationists are using new techniques to increase awareness By Smithsonian.com, adapted by Newsela staff on Word Count 837 Level 1070L Environmental wonders of the world, like Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve pictured above, are a huge draw for amateur photographers. But is a #Hashtag the key to saving critical ecosystems? Photo: Wikimedia Melissa Groo is a nature photographer. She took the giraffe photograph on the cover of Smithsonian magazine s March issue. She knows how to make people pay attention to the beauty and wonder of the wild. To expand her reach, Groo often posts her photos to her popular Instagram account. Like many Instagram users, Groo uses geotags, location-based labels on the photo that tell people where it was taken. She hopes the tags get people even more excited about conservation hot spots. However, she and other wildlife and conservation photographers worry that geotagging might bring too many amateur photographers who would disturb the animals. In a worst case scenario, the photographs could even draw poachers who want to kill the animals to sell them. That s something we should always be cautious about, she says. This article is available at 5 reading levels at 1

2 Now, conservationists are thinking about using location-based tagging to figure out which sites attract visitors. Nobuhiko Yoshimura is a graduate student at Hokkaido University in Japan and lead author of a study using social media. He says, "Visualizing accumulated human choices could contribute to evaluating the invisible values of nature. People might even use that information to decide which areas to fund for conservation. Studying The Ecosystems Of Hokkaido, Japan For the study, the authors decided to look at ecosystems in the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. The landscape is a rugged region full of mountains, volcanoes, natural hot springs and plenty of natural beauty. They used the economic ideas of supply and demand in their study. "Supply" represented the diversity in a given ecosystem and the "demand" represented a number of photos posted on a particular area on the photosharing site Flickr. Overall, Yoshimura and his coauthor Tsutom Hiura, found that natural areas in national parks were very appealing to Flickr users. People were particularly interested in areas with rivers or lakes and high levels of biodiversity. Spencer Wood is an environmental scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle. He has been involved with a number of studies on how the public values natural spaces. Wood has measured visitation to national parks in the U.S. using crowd-sourced photographs on Flickr. He has also looked into how changes to some ecosystems can affect visitor levels. We re using people s posts on social media as a source of information on their behavior," Wood says. The Effects Of Tourist Popularity In another study, Wood found similar results to Yoshimura in terms of how tourist popularity matches up with ecosystem services. Wood and his coauthors examined thousands of photos of Belize posted on Flickr. They discovered that the most popular areas tended to match up closely with local fishing interests. Tourists often took pictures of healthy reefs and seabed grass. These features are also important for local lobster fishermen. Wood says that this kind of research can be used when developing an area. Development that negatively affected fishing in some areas would also affect money from tourism. Katie Chang is the educational services manager for the national conservation organization Land Trust Alliance. She says the use of social media could be useful as additional information. Right now, conservation depends on information people give to researchers on their own. This information could be skewed. She had some concerns with relying too much on information from social media. Some places may not be photographed as often simply because there are not as many people there. As a result, areas with more people might be given more importance. This article is available at 5 reading levels at 2

3 Social Media Results Can Be Too Unpredictable In addition, what people value simply does not always match up with the most natural places. Using social media could spawn a popularity contest instead of a real discussion about conservation. For example, in Yoshimura s study, the authors found that certain national parks were more popular than others. The difference was more likely because of accessibility rather than beauty, conservation value or anything else, he says. The parks that were visited more often were much more easy to reach and see than the parks that were not visited. Rob Aldrich is the director of community conservation at Land Trust Alliance. He notes that there could be a difference between what visitors to an area photograph as opposed to what locals value. [Nature] has different values for different people, even in the same community, says Aldrich. He adds that social media can help land trusts or other conservation organizations decide which pieces of land they should save. They can see how much they are photographed and figure out how important they are to the local community. He said, however, that other factors needed to be considered. They need to think about ecosystem services, importance to local community or economy, and historical value. In the end, tagging your local environment may not be enough to save it. However, Wood says that using social media to figure out important areas is a vastly cheaper way to get information than traditional means like surveys. This is just one additional source of information to help guide the decision-making, he says. This article is available at 5 reading levels at 3

4 Quiz 1 Which two sentences from the article contain CENTRAL ideas? 1. Now, conservationists are thinking about using location-based tagging to figure out which sites attract visitors. 2. The landscape is a rugged region full of mountains, volcanoes, natural hot springs and plenty of natural beauty. 3. Development that negatively affected fishing in some areas would also affect money from tourism. 4. In the end, tagging your local environment may not be enough to save it. 1 and 2 2 and 3 3 and 4 1 and 4 2 Which detail would be MOST important to include in a summary of the article? Using geotags on social media could help provide information about places in need of conservation. Some wildlife photographers worry that geotags could bring amateur photographers to some areas. The Japanese island of Hokkaido is full of natural beauty from mountains and volcanoes. Some national parks are visited more often than others simply because they are easier to get to. 3 Which answer choice BEST explains the author's purpose in this article? to explain the role of geotags in raising awareness about the need for conservation to describe the work of wildlife photographers in remote locations to explain how healthy reefs and seagrass are important to fishermen to describe the differences between what locals and tourists value in an area This article is available at 5 reading levels at 4

5 4 Which sentence from the article explains a viewpoint that conflicts with that of the authors of the Hokkaido University study? People were particularly interested in areas with rivers or lakes and high levels of biodiversity. They discovered that the most popular areas tended to match up closely with local fishing interests. Right now, conservation depends on information people give to researchers on their own. Using social media could spawn a popularity contest instead of a real discussion about conservation. This article is available at 5 reading levels at 5