Open air laboratories

We cannot conserve what we do not understand. We will not conserve what we do not love.¹

Fewer and fewer people have a connection to nature. Too many think milk comes from a grocery store and water comes from a bottle. Getting people to understand the incredible diversity of life and getting them to understand that life's diversity isn't found only in the Amazon or Borneo may be the most important task conservationists face in the next century. That's why events like a BioBlitz can make such a difference. A BioBlitz shows the public how many species are found in their own backyards.

But a BioBlitz is a 24-hour event. It happens once every year or two, and then it's gone -- unless teachers build part of their regular curriculum around it.

The Natural History Museum in London recently launched a much more ambitious project: Open Air Laboratories. Here's the first objective described on the OPAL website:

1. Increase knowledge and awareness
Through interactive websites and community participation, OPAL aims to get over one million people more aware of the open spaces and conservation sites around them and more knowledgable about the contribution individuals can make to protect them.

OPAL takes the great things that BioBlitzes have done and casts its net even wider. OPAL not only introduces science to the public. It engages the public in collecting new scientific data. As that famously liberal² magazine, The Economist, put it:

The next generation of nature lovers, explorers and naturalists need nurturing. They need to be tempted out of their homes, away from their televisions and computer games, and into the muddy forest to hunt for spiders or to fish out something sludgy from a green pond. The children that today are squelching through the mud and discovering the world for the first time will, in 80 years, be able to walk through our countryside and know whether or not things are as they should be. And that is essential if we are to be responsible environmental citizens.