All around the world diverse peoples and cultures are inspired by birds. Birds are vocal and charismatic, ideal candidates for engaging people in issues of conservation. At the same time, conservation science often fails to acknowledge that most people care about nature not for rational reasons of ecological dependency, but for emotive, personal relationships they have with creatures they share their environment with. It is those personal stories that we need to explore and cultivate to maintain the Earth’s richness of both biological and cultural diversity.

Dr Grabowska-Zhang is a post-doctoral researcher at the Edward Grey Institute. Her doctoral thesis studied social behaviour in the Great Tit. She is part of a research team developing the Ethno- Ornithology World Archive, an open source database of culturally-relevant knowledge of birds.

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