Our organisation seeks to educate the public and improve people’s relationship with living nature by using a wide range of educational methods, including approaches that appeal to emotions. The following paper was published in the journal Natura Montenegrina in Montenegro in 2004.
NATURA MONTENEGRINA, PODGORICA, 3, 2004, I–VI
Ing. Jiří H A L E Š
This paper presents an initiative of a Czech voluntary, non-governmental, non-profit organisation whose programme focuses mainly on the conservation of amphibians and reptiles.
Besides the indirect adverse effects of modern civilisation, reptiles—especially snakes and geckos (Gekkonidae)—are threatened by distorted public attitudes arising from traditional myths and superstitions. These beliefs attribute qualities and behaviour to snakes that they do not possess and consequently lead to the deliberate killing of species that are formally protected by law.
Enforcing conservation legislation through punishment is rarely effective and, where it occurs at all, is generally unpopular. Rather than punishing people after nature has already been harmed, education offers another possibility: changing public attitudes and behaviour so that damage is prevented in the first place.
Choosing the best educational strategy is not straightforward. It must be adapted to the target group and based on knowledge of local customs and cultural characteristics, while also taking account of age, religion and other relevant psychological factors. It is easy to encourage affection for colourful butterflies, songbirds and similarly popular animals. Snakes, by contrast, present a far greater challenge. Why is this so?
We investigated the origins of negative attitudes towards snakes through psychometric experiments and by evaluating a large body of responses to a questionnaire completed by visitors to the travelling exhibition Problems of Reptile Conservation. The exhibition was presented at many locations in Bohemia and Slovakia, as well as across the former Yugoslavia, including Ljubljana, Zagreb, Rijeka, the Plitvice Lakes, Travnik and Skopje. The results were presented at an ethological conference of the Psychological Association of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and at the Third Congress of Croatian Biologists in 1987.
The most important finding was that the supposedly innate and unchangeable aversion to snakes is, in more than 90% of cases, a consequence of imprinting: behaviour is transferred from one generation to the next during childhood, when children often react not through rational thought but by subconsciously copying parents and other adults. Numerous experiments also confirmed that this aversion—a significant obstacle to practical enforcement of endangered-species legislation—can be reduced through suitable educational methods and may even develop into strong sympathy. The older the person, however, the more difficult it becomes to change this subconscious attitude.
Ecoballet “The Ominous Fairy by the Snake’s Cradle”, by Anna Cehelská, Slovakia.It is therefore most effective to work with children, replacing inappropriate fairy tales about evil dragons and snakes with positive characters. This is the purpose of our art-based environmental education.
Attitudes and behaviour can be changed in several ways. Accurate scientific information is essential, but on its own it often fails to engage the general public. We therefore use emotionally engaging forms—songs, poetry and theatre—to attract attention first and then use that interest to challenge conventional ways of thinking.
We have applied these methods particularly through the youth festival and competition Cantata Ecologica, organised on our initiative in Bohemia, Slovakia and Croatia, usually with participants from all three countries. The festivals and their creative works gradually grew beyond the scope of the original modest project and were featured several times in television and radio broadcasts—for example, in a song about a good dragon who saved a princess from an evil prince.
Our Centre for Environmental Education of Young People developed similar activities over many years. We also use parts of the programme produced by our video studio Get to Know and Protect for this purpose. Interestingly, adults who do not wish to appear old-fashioned to their children—and who want to retain their respect—also begin to adopt modern environmental attitudes and abandon traditionally negative views of reptiles. In this way, young people can paradoxically educate their elders.
Thanks to its geomorphological and climatic diversity, Montenegro has one of Europe’s richest reptile faunas. Reptiles are therefore an important component of its biodiversity, yet many species are endangered and deserve greater attention. In practice, this need is often overlooked. At the First Symposium of Ecologists of Montenegro, for example, no paper dealt directly with reptile ecology or conservation. The only relevant contribution was a poster listing species from a single valley, without ecological observations or an assessment of how the species were threatened and what measures were needed for their survival.
On my way to the symposium, I stopped at Sasovići near Zelenika in the Bay of Kotor. I had previously proposed conservation measures there for 19 reptile species, with two additional species recorded on the slopes above the locality. Alongside private educational initiatives, I published an article in the Bulletin of the Nature Protection Institute and Natural History Museum of Montenegro in Titograd (No. 20, 1987–88). I have not yet seen any response to my recommendations for preventing the impoverishment of this locality.
On the contrary, Miodrag Šimrak, a resident of nearby Kuti, recently told me that people living in a new weekend house built in the middle of the former habitat had offered him money to shoot all the snakes around the building. Unfortunately, this is a typical example of the gap between nature conservation law and its practical enforcement.
Public appreciation of this fauna in Montenegro lags some fifty years behind that in Bohemia, where local people working through non-governmental organisations care for reptile and amphibian sites and species. They create ponds for amphibian breeding and build artificial hibernation shelters and egg-laying sites for reptiles. We have moved beyond the passive principle of “let them live” towards active assistance with their survival.
In Montenegro, unfortunately, even the first of these stages is not yet widely evident, and the deliberate killing of species formally protected by law continues. Our organisation can offer schools the educational video Get to Know and Protect Reptiles, designed to help improve this situation. It surveys all Croatian reptile species and was produced, at the request of Croatian institutions and television, with Croatian narration. Because Montenegro has the same reptile species, only minor grammatical adaptation of the commentary should be necessary.
