The loss of wilderness and species is already taking place, we are in midst of the sixth mass extinction. The memories of what is lost are already vanishing. It's hard to remember what already changed since our childhood but it’s even harder to imagine what had changed before we were even born.

 

The shifting baseline syndrome is making us peceiving nature inaccurately. Due to short life-spans and faulty memories, humans have a poor conception of how much of the natural world has been degraded by our actions, because our ‘baseline’ shifts with every generation, and sometimes even in an individual.

 

“Generational amnesia is when knowledge is not passed down from generation to generation. For example, people may think of as ‘pristine’ wilderness the wild places that they experienced during their childhood, but with every generation this baseline becomes more and more degraded.” (Dr. E.J. Milner- Gulland)

 

The time has come to recover and recall knowledge, to remember and to stand up to defend our natural world.