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.
I agree with all of your points. I am just pointing out that our forests in the US were nearly completely gone at one point and the graphic doesn’t actually represent the actual conditions of the time period it is describing at least in the US.
No worries, I didn’t take it as you denying anything. People have done much to make things better, but this is another case where the battle is never really over.
I thought this would just be a quick post that would get about 30 likes, but this has really blown up. Which is great, I love all the chat this is generating, but if I had expected such a reaction, I could have found a better visualisation! 😅
When I learned that Michigan had at one point 10% of its trees left and those were in the UP, I was floored. The MI DNR had a good writeup of a brief history of our forests and its relation to the deer population that I read a couple years ago.
Very nice! I just quickly browsed some of the info on michigan.gov’s website and that is a tremendous recovery! It is a crime that conservation has become a divisive issue today, when it benefits us all. I wonder which of these programs could still be pulled off today.
Imagine we had a CCC or similar that you could sign up for like the military that just does conservation and beautifying our shared lands.
I have wondered for years now why we can’t do public works programs like this anymore. If things keep regressing, we may just have them again but under less than ideal circumstances.
My work with animals has been some of the hottest, grossest, smelliest work I’ve ever done, but it’s also been the most rewarding even though working there costs me money. All my standard work labor feels like it goes off to some vaguely anonymous rich person, but the animal work lets me see those that I’m helping and the end result of my efforts and there’s no denying it makes my community a better place.
For a country that loves to tout itself as the best, we really like to let it go to shit. 🤔