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.
it happened with rare plants that were found in america that is almost associated with tropical asia, it is now extinct, its unique because its the only one found in temperate america as opposed to ASIA, SE asia, new zealand and australia(thismia americana a mycoheterotroph, was discovered over 100years ago by Pfieffer and was never seen again, its relatives are concentrated in asia, the question is how did it get to america(called disjunct population and why isnt there more plants, its presumed to be extinct due to development around a place in chicago since then. not enough attention goes to plants and small animals, theres a term called charismatic megafauna(aka your large furry endangered animals).
We found a mycoheterotroph (Monotropa uniflora) last year while in the woods! It was so mysterious looking.
I have heard charismatic megafauna before. It’s easy to get people on board with saving the cute things. A non-flowering plant or a salamander, not so much.