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The benefits of counting butterflies: recommendations for a successful citizen science project
(2022)
Citizen science (CS) projects, being popular across many fields of science, have recently also become a popular tool to collect biodiversity data. Although the benefits of such projects for science and policy making are well understood, relatively little is known about the benefits participants get from these projects as well as their personal backgrounds and motivations. Furthermore, very little is known about their expectations. We here examine these aspects, with the citizen science project "German Butterfly Monitoring" as an example. A questionnaire was sent to all participants of the project and the responses to the questionnaire indicated the following: center dot Most transect walkers do not have a professional background in this field, though they do have a high educational level, and are close to retirement, with a high number of females; center dot An important motivation to join the project is to preserve the natural environment and to contribute to scientific knowledge; center dot Participants benefit by enhancing their knowledge about butterflies and especially their ability to identify different species (taxonomic knowledge); center dot Participants do not have specific expectations regarding the project beyond proper management and coordination, but have an intrinsic sense of working for a greater good. The willingness to join a project is higher if the project contributes to the solution of a problem discussed in the media (here, insect decline). Based on our findings from the analysis of the questionnaire we can derive a set of recommendations for establishing a successful CS project. These include the importance of good communication, e.g., by explaining what the (scientific) purpose of the project is and what problems are to be solved with the help of the data collected in the project. The motivation to join a CS project is mostly intrinsic and CS is a good tool to engage people during difficult times such as the COVID-19 pandemic, giving participants the feeling of doing something useful.
The management of biodiversity represents a research topic that needs to involve not only several (sub-) disciplines from the natural sciences but, in particular, also the social sciences and humanities. Furthermore, over the last couple of years, the need for the integration of other kinds of knowledge (experience based or indigenous knowledge) is increasingly acknowledged. For instance, the incorporation of such knowledge is indispensable for place-based approaches to sustainable land management, which require that the specific ecological and social context is addressed. However, desirable as it may be, such an engagement of the holders of tacit knowledge is not easy to achieve. It demands reconciling well-established scientific procedural standards with the implicit or explicit criteria of relevance that apply in civil society a process that typically causes severe tensions and comes up against both habitual as well as institutional constraints. The difficulty of managing such tensions is amplified particularly in large integrated projects and represents a major challenge to project management. At the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, several integrated research projects have been conducted over the past years in which experience has been gained with these specific challenges. This paper presents some of the lessons learned from large integrated projects, with an emphasis on project design and management structure. At the centre of the present contribution are experiences gained in the coordination and management of LEGATO (LEGATO stands for Land-use intensity and Ecological EnGineering - Assessment Tools for risks and Opportunities in irrigated rice based production systems, see www.legato-project.net), an ongoing, large-scale, inter- and transdisciplinary research project dealing with the management of irrigated rice landscapes in Southeast Asia. In this project, local expertise on traditional production systems is absolutely crucial but needs to be integrated with natural and social science research to identify future-proof land management systems.