Which areas would you protect and how would you do that?

This worksheet will prompt your students to think about what they would protect. I’ve filled in an example of seagrass in the UK, which you may wish to show in class before handing out the worksheet. More information on seagrass can be found from the Wildlife Trusts or the World Resources Institute, and the UN has produced a video about seagrass around the world: 

Find case studies

In Tickets for the Ark, I discuss case studies such as Gorongoza National Park, the Phoenix Islands Marine Protected Area, and the impact of missionaries on Indigenous societies in Suriname. 

There are many more examples though, and the IUCN has extensive information on protected areas, as does the Marine Conservation Society. For case students related to local people, including displacement from their land, militarised conservation and ‘green land grabs’, there is information on the Parks and People website and news on Mongabay. For more advanced students, the May 2023 issue of the journal Oryx focusses on human rights and conservation, and the papers are free to access.  

How can people protect nature?

Ask students for ideas, prompting them to think about things they can do personally as well as larger-scale actions. This should include protecting nature within urban and agricultural environments, as well as creating protected areas dedicated to nature. Suitable resources include RSPB wildlife gardening, Wildlife Trust information about farmland, RSPB information about pesticides. 

Encourage them to think about what the barriers are to the actions and how they can be overcome. For example: 

Reducing plastic use would have many benefits for wildlife. It can be very convenient to buy bottled drinks though. But what if the school made it easy to refill your bottles with plenty of drinking fountains? What if the canteen provided cups if you forgot your bottle? If you reduced the number of fizzy drinks you bought, this would be healthier as well as use less plastic.  

Wildlife friendly farming can be more expensive, meaning not everyone can afford the food. Solutions include reducing inequality so more people can afford the food, subsidising farmers so they can change their practices, educating farmers, and researching ways to making farming more environmentally-friendly. Everyone can reduce food waste. If we waste less food, we need to use less land for farming, so we can leave more land for nature.   

Protected areas can be a great way of ensuring nature can thrive. In many cases, it is best to protect large areas, particularly for animals that have large home ranges. But it can be expensive, and people want to use land for other reasons. For example, we need farmland to grow our food. We can create corridors between protected areas to allow animals to move between them, and we can make land outside protected areas more wildlife-friendly too. We can consult with people who will be affected by protected areas, whether this is farmers on Dartmoor or Indigenous peoples in tropical rainforests. Giving more power to Indigenous peoples and local communities can make protected areas more effective and equitable, particularly when Indigenous peoples are granted land rights.