Wildlife Australia - Spring 2017

‘There’s no WiFi in the forest, but you’ll find a better connection.’

Ironically, memes about ‘switching off’ often go viral on social media,

but in the age of smartphones and increasingly lifelike virtual reality

experiences, Karin Cox asks whether being connected will inspire us

to save wild places or will further distract us from real-world issues?

W

hen smartphones and social
media began their meteoric rise
to popularity, many argued that
they were divorcing us from our natural
environment, trivialising off-screen pursuits
and leading to ‘slacktivism’ or self-satisfying
‘virtue-signalling’, whereby tweeting or
sharing negates the need to donate or make
a hands-on contribution. Our absorption
with staying ‘connected’ makes it hard to
argue that those concerns aren’t valid.
Technology now presents a formidable
distraction from reality. Yet it is easy to
fear new technology and to focus on the
negatives without recognising the positive
applications too. Apprehensions about how
technology might alter nature or affect our
species (and others) have old, deep roots.

In A Sand Country Almanac, Aldo
Leopold lamented the rise of ‘a gadget
industry [that] pads the bumps against
nature-in-the-raw’– that was in 1949,
decades before mobile phones were
invented! Our future won’t just include
smartphones, but also smart appliances,
offices, houses and cities, as well as
augmented and virtual reality (VR).

Learning in virtual labs

Environmentalist Bob Brown once
insisted, ‘The future will be green or not
at all’, but perhaps the future will be both
‘green’ and ‘screen’– one feeding into the
other. Satellites, drones, robotics and
VR headsets won’t just transform how
we learn, work and live, but also how we
approach conservation and experience
nature. Last year, the Australian Museum
showcased David Attenborough’s Virtual
Reality Experiences: the first 3D nature

documentary of the Great Barrier Reef.

Virtual reality such as this might be key

to interacting with concerned citizens,

representing an evolution of the museum

experience. The same technology enables

researchers to enter a virtual field from

anywhere and model effects that may be

immediately observable, or that might

allow them to better predict future

impacts. Several Australian universities

already have VR labs. The University of

Newcastle is teaching midwifery students

emergency neonatal resuscitation using VR

headsets, and the Queensland University of

Technology has used statistical modelling,

360 ̊ footage and ambisonic sound to create

a game that allows ‘virtual scientists’ to

episodically enter the Peruvian Amazon,

informing jaguar conservation.

Seeing is believing

An ongoing issue for conservationists is

getting decision-makers to understand

complex issues and to act accordingly. In

2003, Guo et al. found some evidence that

VR experiences better inform participants

and generate episodic memories that can

elicit more confidence in actions taken

as a result. A 2011 study by Sun Joo Ahn,

in which participants cut down a virtual

redwood tree with a chainsaw, was found

to reduce their paper use. Just as positive

cage-dive experiences make divers more

invested in white shark conservation (see

p. 6), world leaders who engage in positive

interactions with threatened species or who

see the impact of environmental issues

with their own eyes, might make more pro-

conservation decisions. But what about

the rest of us? Will virtually swimming

with dolphins encourage us to protect the

oceans? Or will ‘near enough’ become a

‘good enough’ substitute for an outside

world that is slowly slipping away? Only

time will tell. However, a resource-driven

‘screen future’ may be short-lived if it

cannot inspire a real-world commitment to

a ‘green future’ too.

READING Guo H, et al. 2013. A theoretical basis for

using virtual worlds as a personalised process visualisation

approach. In International Conference on Advanced

Information Systems Engineering: 229–240. Ahn,

SJ, 2011. Embodied experiences in immersive virtual

environments: Effects on pro-environmental attitude and

behavior. Stanford University.

With change comes controversy

Some age-old skills have already received a 21st-century upgrade, but few advances

come without accompanying issues. Tracking animals – making hypotheses based on

evidence and prior knowledge – represents a pre-cursor to modern science, and apps

such as CyberTracker enable non-literate trackers to input GPS and ID data, assisting

conservation efforts. Drones, satellites and even robotic cameras also provide location

data to aid conservation management. While helpful for biologists, GPS data is deadly

in the wrong hands. ‘Telemetry terrorism’ is a term coined for when traffickers use GPS

or tracking data to exploit endangered species. Data can be misused in other ways too.

Alarmingly, in 2015, an agency that had granted research permits for tracking white

sharks for conservation purposes gave data to WA authorities to aid with a shark cull.

READING: Cooke SJ, et al. 2017. Troubling issues at the frontier of animal tracking for conservation and

management. Conservation Biology. doi:10.1111/cobi.12895

Photo: The People Speak![CC]

Background: Judith Deland. Inset: Esther Vargas

CAN’T SEE

THE FOREST

FOR THE

SCREENS KC

A gadget industry pads the

bumps against nature-in-the-raw;

woodcraft becomes the art of

using gadgets. – Aldo Leopold

Will virtual reality technology make us

value wild places as refuges for those

wanting to disconnect from a curated

‘unreality’, or will it cultivate more

apathy? Send a letter to editor@wildlife.

org.au or comment on Facebook at

smarturl.it/WAMYourSay

Wildlife Australia | 37