Managing eco-anxiety and working in conservation

Podcast transcript

The following conversation starts at timestamp [32:25] in the podcast.

Rob Smith: Now, you may remember back in episode six of the podcast, I visited the University of Kent, where I had an excellent ramble through the campus with Emma Mason, who's their sustainability coordinator. We looked at the ponds next to the biggest nightclub on the campus, which also happened to be a perfect spot for a really healthy population of great crested newts and a whole bunch of other stuff besides. If you haven't heard it, go back, take a listen, it's really worthwhile. Anyway, among the places we stopped and looked at was a freshly planted orchard of 300 fruit and nut trees to celebrate the university's upcoming 60th birthday Jubilee in 2025. Well, while I was there, I also got the chance to have a chat with Bella Sabin-Dawson, who happens to be Kent Wildlife Trust's first ever apprentice. She's their new education and wellbeing apprentice, and she was also a student at the University of Kent beforehand. She's loving her new role and is especially keen to help people use practical knowledge as a way of combating the very natural eco-anxiety that a lot of us feel. So, I started by asking her how she'd come to be in this role. 

Bella Sabin-Dawson: I've just always been passionate about wildlife, always been passionate about the environment. I started my journey here as a wildlife conservation student, and then transferred onto environmental social science once I realised how anthropocentric climate change and biodiversity loss is. 

Rob Smith: So, what do you mean by that? 

Bella Sabin-Dawson: Well, you know, wildlife conservation is a complex issue, but humans are always inevitably at the root of that, and so I think once I realised that, I felt like my efforts would be better put to use, focusing on human issues.  

Rob Smith: Right. Okay. If you can sort the people out, then the wildlife will sort itself out. 

Bella Sabin-Dawson: We hope they come hand in hand. 

Rob Smith: Yeah, because you were quite miserable about it all for a spell. 

Bella Sabin-Dawson: Absolutely. It's always difficult once you start learning about the hard truth, the hard facts about climate change, biodiversity loss, everything that's going on in the world, it is so interdisciplinary and interlinked. It can be very overwhelming and daunting. And so it's difficult to process those emotions, especially if you're studying it full time. It can be quite a lot to deal with. 

Rob Smith: How are you feeling now? 

Bella Sabin-Dawson: I’m feeling better. I think it's something that you manage to learn how to cope with over time. But I came across the term eco-anxiety when I was in my second year here at Uni. And I kind of heard the term and I was like, “Oh my goodness, this is me.” I could relate so clearly with that term. And from that point, I then reached out, and we found a group of students that also felt the same way, and really connected with a community that empathised with those feelings. Being a part of a student cohort, you know, there's a lot of people studying these things now and a lot of people struggling with the same difficult emotions. 

Rob Smith: And of course, the thing is, it's not just about forming a support group and holding hands and saying, we can all make ourselves feel better. If you actually do something, then you can actually make stuff better and that then makes you feel better. 

Bella Sabin-Dawson: Yes, absolutely. So once you've found those people, I mean, you can absolutely do it on your own, but I find personally having that community of people, that network, we can then recognise these emotions, recognise that we're all feeling overwhelmed, and then say, “Okay guys, you know, we've accepted the fact that things are hard. And we've now come together and we can create meaningful action looking forward and thinking about the steps that we can take.” 

Rob Smith: So given all that and that you are doing your apprenticeship with the Wildlife Trust now, what's your advice for people who might be listening, who have got eco-anxiety, who are deeply worried about where we're going, how things are, you know, headed, what can they do? 

Bella Sabin-Dawson: It's always a tricky one, and it does depend on every person as an individual, because you are going to have different ways of managing your emotions yourself. I would say try and find people who are empathising, who feel similar feelings because even just having the opportunity to talk to somebody about these kind of emotions can really give you a sense of relief. You know, for some people listening to music, just taking your mind off everything, distracting yourself with a TV show or getting out in nature for a walk. Anything that will fully give you a breather from these environmental issues.  

I think a lot of people, either if you're working in the sector or if you're just really interested and trying to, you know, make an impact in your own way, in your own free time, you feel this pressure to constantly be learning as much as you can and taking as much on board as you possibly can because you feel like that's your responsibility as somebody who is environmentally-minded. 

But it is so important that you take a break from everything and make sure that you have some time to switch off and wind down so that you can have a little mental reset every now and then and have a bit of a breather.  

But also one thing that I can really recommend is try and find positive news. It's a really big thing that helps me. I think finding Instagram pages, you know, it is all over social media. We are bombarded with negative stuff all the time. Finding the positive stuff as well is really important. So maybe even switching on post notifications for certain pages. One guy I follow on Instagram and TikTok, Sam Bentley, is absolutely incredible. He collects all of these positive environmental news stories, collects them all up for you, and then presents them in such a nice way. 

Rob Smith: Right. I'll take a look. So Sam Bentley, will look him up. And of course, people should listen to the Talk on the Wild Side podcast! 

Bella Sabin-Dawson: Absolutely.  

Rob Smith: All sorts of good stuff there. And so we're stood here in the newly planted orchard. I mean, does this help you, seeing this kind of thing?  

Bella Sabin-Dawson: Yes, absolutely. You know, it is nice seeing physical positive change and steps towards action. You know, being at the University of Kent as a student and knowing that the university sustainability team and the grounds team are listening - that they're taking action and really making a big effort to make the campus more nature-friendly, more sustainable - is so reassuring. It makes a big difference. When the big world out there is so scary, knowing that close to home, someone is trying to make a big difference is really beneficial. 

Rob Smith: Bella Sabin-Dawson there, Kent Wildlife Trust’s first ever apprentice and a real breath of fresh air, isn't she? Now accompany us on our trip, we also had a current student of conservation at the university, Sam Maddison, who's in his second year. And there were two things that I wanted to have a chat with Sam about: the BioBlitz survey, which has been carried out at the university campus for the last three years, and newts – because newts, particularly great crested ones, form quite a big part of the conservation studies at the University of Kent. And we stopped by their Newt research ponds, which are in fact globally famous - if you know a thing or two about great crested newts, that is - since they have been running continuous studies there for over 30 years. 

Sam Maddison: I do love my UK wildlife and my rewilding. But the newts are something that everybody gets involved with. All the students in Wildlife Conservation at the University Kent will come out here in their first year and learn to survey the newts, to trap them, record them, and use that data for population analysis, which is absolutely fascinating. But isn't it lovely to know we've got such an amazing protected species on campus and that it's thriving here. It's great. 

Rob Smith: Okay. So, we will come on to what your favorite thing is in a minute then. But we are stood by a pond here, which I think you helped construct last year and has already got great crested newt in it. So, it's like – it's working. 

Sam Maddison: Yes, it certainly is. Yeah, we've got quite a lot of ponds on campus. We've been past a few this morning. But the ability of the newt to spread out and make the most use of our ponds on campus is really amazing. And yeah, just shows that the differences that we are able to make just by creating novel habitats for these sort of species. They do really make the most of them. 

Rob Smith: And just talk me through briefly how the project that's been running here for so long, looking at newts, you actually trap the newts on a regular basis and hook them out and have a look at them. 

Sam Maddison: Yeah, so that's run by Professor Richards Griffiths, who is an absolute world0leading authority on great crested newts. So he's been running the research site here. He got permission to do it about 30, 35 years ago, long before my time. So he's been running it since.  

And yeah, so every week you're in surveying season which runs mostly throughout the year, but obviously that's outside of breeding times, don't want to catch them when they're trying to breed. Yeah, every week on Thursday evening, they'll set the traps which are just simple bottle traps. They don't harm the newts in any way. The newt swim into them on their own accord. And then early Friday morning, they will pull them up.  

We get great crested newts here, as well as our other two native species, which are smooth newts and palmate newts. And they record each and every newt that comes out. And for the great crested newts, they actually take pictures of their belly patterns, which are unique to the individuals, like a fingerprint of human. So you can take these pictures side by side and go, ah, yes, we've caught the same newt this week and the next week and see which ponds it's been moving between and track it across its life, which is absolutely fascinating data. 

Rob Smith: So one of the things I really wanted to talk to you about, Sam, is the BioBlitz? Tell me about that. 

Sam Maddison: Yes, the University of Kent BioBlitz is an annual event. I suppose to start off for those who don't know what a BioBlitz is, it's a 24-hour period in which you survey an area. So in our case, that is the lovely 300 hectares of the University of Kent campus. And you survey for as many species as possible. So in our case, we carried out 20 different surveys, everything from newts to bats, to plants, to invertebrates, to birds, and we have everybody, all our volunteers and members of the community. Last year we had an astounding 469 people in attendance. Everybody goes out on the surveys and records as much wildlife as they can. 

Rob Smith: And how much did you find? How many different species are there? 

Sam Maddison: So our species tally for the University of Kent campus last year was 322 species, which was absolutely amazing. About 40% of those were insect species. A lot of moths we found. And then another 40% roughly were our plants. You know, our native British wildflowers. We carry the BioBlitz out in the summer. So this last year just gone, it was the very end of May, 2023. 

Rob Smith: And this is an ongoing one that you're going to do it every May going forwards. That's the idea so you can actually get kind of a picture over time? 

Sam Maddison: Yes. So this May just gone was our third annual BioBlitz. And each year we aim to grow it as more of a, you know, it's such a flagship event at the university that we have so many people come in from outside the university and students and staff that we try and grow it not only in numbers of volunteers and people who get involved also our survey efforts. So yes, we're going ahead next year [2024]. We hope to find even more species of course. 

Rob Smith: And have you noticed any differences looking at the data that since the university has been taking sustainability more seriously, are you seeing more biodiversity on the campus? 

Sam Maddison: Yes. We've only got three years of data from the BioBlitz, specifically. We have found a lot of very interesting species that you might not expect to find. We found some rare species of moths. We found some really fascinating plants as well as obviously, you know, the usual native British mammals, we found hedgehogs, badgers, foxes, pygmy, and common pipistrelle bats, which is really amazing to see them. Three years probably isn't enough time to say for sure that we are having a significant positive impact, but we can say for sure we have all these amazing species on our campus.