Out of sight, out of mind: When a species of animal or plant goes extinct, this species is not only lost to nature – it then disappears relatively quickly from our collective memory, from cultures and discourses, as a study has now confirmed. However, this also has an impact on species protection and our dealings with nature: forgetting past diversity also shifts the idea of what we consider normal, natural or healthy.
We live in the era of the sixth mass extinction: Around one million animal and plant species worldwide are currently threatened with extinction, and countless more have become extinct in recent years and decades. But when species are endangered, rare, or extinct, the encounters and experiences we humans have with them also diminish. Over time, this can go so far that such species disappear completely from people’s memories.
The inconspicuous and hidden are most likely to be affected
An international research team led by Ivan Jaric from the Czech Academy of Sciences has now examined the phenomenon of so-called social extinction in more detail. They wanted to know what factors and mechanisms characterize this forgetting and what possible consequences this can have for people and nature. The team found that a species’ vulnerability to social extinction depends on a wide variety of factors. These include a species’ resilience, its economic, cultural or symbolic importance to society, whether and how long it has been extinct, or how distant and isolated its range is from human settlements and activities.
“Most species die out without society ever taking notice of them,” explains co-author Tina Heger from the Leibniz Institute for Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) in Berlin. While icons among endangered species such as the panda, the large predators of Africa or the great apes are popular and well-known and therefore also receive a lot of attention for their emergency situation, this does not apply to many small, inconspicuous, hidden or remote species. This applies to many organisms living in water, but also to many invertebrates on land, as well as plants, fungi and microorganisms.
Progress can bring forgetting
Another factor are social or cultural changes, for example through urbanization and modernization of society. They, too, can radically change our relationship to nature and lead to a collective amnesia of once well-known species. Medicinal plants are one example: With the triumph of modern medicine in Europe, most people lost knowledge of traditional herbal medicine and medicinal plants.
And even if species were collectively known and conspicuous before they went extinct, after they disappear our image of them changes. Memories of these species are becoming inaccurate – or even fading altogether. This is also shown by studies in southwest China and among indigenous peoples in Bolivia, as the research team reports: local knowledge of once well-known bird species has been lost among the local population after they disappeared. Respondents were unable to name these species or even remember what they looked like or sounded like.
Forgetting changes our view of nature
The problem with this forgetting: If a species that still exists is not present in the collective consciousness, then it has no lobby either – it becomes more difficult to achieve its protection. “Societal extinction may reduce our willingness to pursue ambitious conservation goals. For example, it could reduce public support for reintroduction efforts, especially when these species are no longer present in our memories as natural components of the ecosystem,” explains Jarić.
In turn, forgetting species that are already extinct is changing our view of nature and what we think is normal, natural, or healthy—and this, too, can hamper conservation efforts of surviving species. The research team therefore advocates actively counteracting the second disappearance of many species. Possible measures for this are targeted, long-term communication campaigns, environmental education and the presentation of extinct species in natural history museums, they emphasize. This is the only way to revive, improve and preserve the memory of species that are socially extinct.
Source: Leibniz Institute for Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB); Specialist article: Trends in Ecology and Evolution, doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2021.12.011