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.
That is great to hear. I know some don’t like them and have some reasonable objections, but hey, the wolves were here first!
Yes, extremely important right now, too. They’re pretty much the only thing that’s stopping CWD, a prion disease cousin to Mad Cow, from spreading across north America in wild game and bush meat. Wolves are immune to it, interestingly enough. And they go after sick animals exhibiting odd, “zombie like” behavior due to CWD.
I pray to God it doesn’t jump from bush meat to humans, or into cattle and farming.
I go deer hunting and I know the state collects all the heads to test for prions here. I’ve been tempted so many times to try some of the organ meats, but it’s just too risky in my opinion.