“If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy.
If the word were merely challenging, that would be no problem.
But I wake up each morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world.
That makes it very hard to plan the day.” -E.B. White
For my blog posts, I’m going to be focusing on Conservation and Ecology as my area of focus. To really tie this into my life, my research will be focusing on “Women in Nature”, as my own way of breaking down this large topic and combining my own personal interests and experience of being a women in nature.
While that may sound a bit confusing, let me start out by saying what inspired my research topic. When approached with the task of going out into nature each week to make observations, I immediately felt gratitude for this assignment. I love going out into nature, it’s where I feel I’m able to recharge and heal. Yet when it came down to pick a place as my area of observation, I felt overwhelmed with feelings and memories of bad experiences. I have been harassed multiple times while out by myself in some of my favorite parks around Austin. While these experiences have been only verbal, it still has heavily impacted my level of comfort when going out alone, even to these beautiful and peaceful places. With this in mind, I decided to make observations at a park near my house, Roy G. Guerrero Park, to record my experiences in nature and record what groups of people make use of the park, with a gendered analysis of this data.
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The month of February gave me a very unique light to see the park in. It was the warmest winter on record (Washingtonpost.com) and there was something that shocked the happiness out of me one morning while enjoying the weather. I remember driving to work on Riverside, it was around 10 am and I was overly happy to be wearing shorts. The sun was up and the radio was humming. Then the talk show host on the radio said something I’ll never forget. He said “this is not okay, folks. This is the hottest recorded temperature we’ve ever experienced in February and the last 10 years have been the hottest recorded temperatures we’ve ever had. Things are getting worse and you should think about that while you enjoy the sun today.” Wow. (Life moment noted and felt.)
Before the bridge collapsed, notice the lush vegetation.
After the bridge collapsed, notice the amount of water under the bridge.
This is a picture almost a year after the collapse. The lush vegetation seen in the first picture has now spread to the sides, and the stream of water full of rocks now only gives life to erosion.
For my first visit to the park in February, everything seemed to serve as a reminder of climate change and how conservation efforts were desperately needed. The bridge that connected the baseball field side of the park with the forest side was continuing to break down. The area underneath the bridge had already seen major changes since the collapse of the bridge last March after the floods. What used to be a small gap between two sides, now was about 50 feet wide and covered in sand. Where there once was tall grasses, a variety of flowers and countless little lizards, the sand allowed for no life, only the occasional stream of water to run through it and connect to the river when it rained. When I used to come to secret beach with my dog, my preference was for the beach side of the park. We would walk to the beach side and he would play in the water for hours while I would bird watch. The beach specifically, was home to Great Blue Herons, a variety of hawks, sunbathing turtles, mallards, cardinals, and blue jays (just to name a few). I would sit the sand and hope that the large white horse that lived across the river would step outside the stables to eat some grass.
My dog, Meadow is the one on the left wearing the red bandanna and wondering why we took Theo (my friend’s dog) with us.
My dog died shortly after the bridge collapsed though and my experience with the park collapsed with it, at least for a while. The erosion got worse, the flower blooms became smaller and the beach didn’t feel the same way anymore. There was less biodiversity in the park following the collapse of the bridge. Now when I travel to the park, I stay on the forest side, where the disk golf areas are. This side of the park is covered in grass, with trees, and finches everywhere you look. I know that my preference for the beach died with my dog because going there only makes me feel lonely. All the birds are either in the water or flying to the tops of trees but the forest is covered in insects, squirrels, deer, lizards, birds and grass that grows all year long. I’ve taken a liking to finding grassy spots in the forest secluded by trees and taking naps in the grass.
The data I’ve collected over the groups of people I’ve noticed has been interesting. While I haven’t run any statistical tests on how many women are visiting this area vs. men who visit, I’ve noticed that I rarely see women visiting the park as often as I have seen groups of men visiting. According to WWF, “women often are excluded from participating in community decision and policy-making regarding natural resource use”. While this statement is in reference to the global inequality faced by women in areas of poverty, even in a developed part of the world such as the United States, women do not have equal representation in politics (dailykos.com) and are left out of the decision making process. The U.S. actually ranks as one of the lowest countries for female representation in government. The statement I heard on the radio earlier in February felt like a call to action. If we love our city and we enjoy those warm sunny days by spending them in the park, how can we get more people, specifically women, into helping to conserve these natural areas? In a study done in 1987, on the influence of gender on attitudes, knowledge, and behaviors towards animals by Kellert and Berry, the researchers found that men were more knowledgeable on wildlife management issues, were more concerned than women about conserving wildlife and that women generally harbored more fear and indifference toward wildlife than men (The relationship of gender to species conservation attitudes). This research came out on the heels of the environmental movement and while it was done almost 30 years ago, the fact that gender influences people’s experiences with nature has not changed. If women are afraid of going out into nature by themselves or at night, how can they contribute as much as men can in issues that really need people to work together in, such as conservation? While the results found that might lead one to believe that women do not care about nature as much as men do, I beg the reader to read between the lines before simplifying the issue as such. If women are being left out of roles of government (decision making processes) and if women, such as myself, experience harassment or danger when going out into nature by themselves, how are women going to help contribute to conservation issues if gender is impacting their ability to experience nature (macfound.org)?
Bibliography
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/03/08/americas-year-without-a-winter-the-2015-2016-season-was-the-warmest-on-record/
http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/how_we_work/people_and_conservation/our_work/gender_and_conservation/
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/9/27/1137274/-The-Gender-Gap-Percentage-of-Women-in-Government-Worldwide-We-re-Number-One-Right-Not-So-Much
https://supplyshock.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/2001-the-relationship-of-gender-to-species-conservation-attitudes.pdf
https://www.macfound.org/media/files/CSD_GENDER_WHITE_PAPER.pdf