Why people do what they do...

I'm fascinated with studies about why people do what they do. James L. Pease, PhD, is a neat guy that I heard speak at the National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association (NWRA) annual conference in Chicago.
He is the director of Iowa State University's Wildlife Extension.

His talk was focussed on the qualities of individuals that make them more, or less, likely to participate in hands on conservation practices. He has some of that research online and you can read about it in papers like Why Landowners Restore Wetlands: A National Survey (PDF).

As I try to find similar journal articles at the library I recall a conversation with my old director. I asked her what types of university research communications people go back to school for. I had noticed that quite few science staff were working on masters degrees and wondered what communicators go back for. My background is in environmental policy and ethics as well as sociology. I then went back for programming and design. I never took formal communications training. She said "Their MBA"? ♦

I'm now wondering what the favourite academic journals are for communications staff. A few of mine are Alternatives Journal and the Journal of Political Ecology.

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Toronto The Green

Here is an email I sent to Garry a few days back. Just need some content on this blog.

Might I suggest that we think about "Toronto the Green"?

I'm from T-dot (Scarborough Bluffs) and we have a ton of interesting environmental issues and areas that are all nearby:

• Bring Back the Don,
• the BrickWorks,
  
• The Rouge Park , The largest urban park in North America I think.
  
• the Bluffers Park's "dunkers flow balancing" (PDF) system features some neat biological water treatment and "the Bluffs" a unique geographic feature in Toronto. Water quality issues raise a lot of technical and communications challenges that the public are hearing about.
• Leslie Street Spit is a unique human made / urban feature and the picture of the snapping turtle is my wife's favourite turtle picture ever!
• The Oak Savannah in High Park is kind of cool.
  

There was a fabulous Royal Commission on the Toronto Waterfront in the early 1990s. It has helped lead to the Waterfront Regeneration Trust and the 900 km long Waterfront Trail . They have dealt with a ton of environmental communications challenges.

I'm not sure if it fits into the nature of the conference but I have always been fascinated with the rural-urban split. It is amazing how little conversation we have about how they beneficially depend on each other. Partly due to other ministries playing large urban roles I guess we don't get to see a lot of the urban environment issues up close.

Urban fishing or learning about conservation language with "Toronto" communities like Chinese anglers might be interesting for those of us not involved in fisheries to learn about. My charity is going to start looking at messages around turtles in various Asian communities in the near future.

This is the Year of the Frog.
Maybe we could get Toronto Zoo folks from Adopt-a-Pond to talk to us. They are also tracking turtles with NHIC and really spend a lot of time educating the city bugs about natural systems.

I'm a bit biased myself since I'm a volunteer with a wildlife rehabilitation centre for turtles. The Toronto Zoo does a lot of work around road ecology/mortality as well they have an urban turtle initiative where they track Blanding's, Map, and Snapping turtles in the Rouge Valley. That definitely ties MOT to MNR. Scott Gillingwater would be an interesting speaker on turtles. He is an SAR biologist with the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority. He played a role in preventing road mortalities in Point Pelee.

Kip Parker from the Toronto Wildlife Centre is a great speaker. He is an independant wildlife rehabilitator and speaker. Wildlife in captivity is an MNR issue (and definitely one rich with communication challenges. Bam-bam?)

That brings me to the Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP) that rescue migrating birds that collide with buildings in downtown Toronto. September is a busy time for them. They have a FLAP YouTube video but I guess many of the people on here will not be able to view it.

The Toronto Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) has an interesting history and has to communicate complex issues to huge numbers of people. They probably have a ton of interesting speakers…

I'll cut the list there but maybe we could do multiple trips in Toronto and do Lynn's 20X20 slide shows to report back to each other. Heck we could even set up a Facebook (FB) group for one, a blog for another and a video blog for a third. An interesting way to include all that Web2.0 stuff that everyone is so excited about. if we could get the connections...

OMAF has been using PodCasts for a while on their site to reach the "farm report crowd"…

I think I'm a bit unfocussed here Garry. I think there could be a lot of interesting things to do and tons of local speakers too!

How about joining "We Brake for Turtles" FB group?

There is a FaceBook (FB) group called "we brake for turtles".

The limitation of FB is that you have to be on FB to benefit. Blogger can allow anyone to look at content.

It'd be a lot more fun to do this on Facebook! :-)

But blogger.com will do.

Cheers, Abby

Why not use Blogger to learn about blogging?

I just set this up while on a conference call.
I can add new users if they have accounts with Blogger.
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