Most people don’t care about conservation. If they see a trap or a tool they don’t understand, they just steal it or throw it away. Field research is hard, and you have to be convinced it’s what you truly want to do. As the author said, you just do it, even without any guarantee of success.

The most important thing in this book is realizing that this is a real issue for nearly all wild populations around the world. All numbers are below what they used to be in the past. Some species have the data to prove their decline, but the majority haven’t been studied enough, so the real numbers will remain a mystery. How can a researcher study and try to conserve a species if only a few people care? It’s so sad and a clear sign that many species will be extinct in just a few years.

Is it only what we relate to/think is cute/care about, or nature how it used to be, or...? And only when it is convenient for us as humans?Take the bever as an example in the Netherlands, once a native species and then it couldn't be found here anymore. After years the bever was finally back in the Netherlands, and Staatsbosbeheer was very happy about it (we had this in NLH), but now the bevers are disrupting ecosystems because they build their dams and even break our dykes, which puts our societies in danger. So now do we want to get rid of the bever again or should we preserve it still?

This book reminded me that maybe our sense of something being missing when we go out into nature is because our (or my) focus is different. We no longer view nature in the same way as previous generations who got to see rivers as bustling with life outside our own, we no longer know what nature is in the same way that they did, we feel the loss, but we cannot be sure what we have lost. This quote reminded me to be more mindful in nature and of what I feel that nature actually is. Is it the elemental parts like the running water or patient rocks? Or is it the rushing movements of animals scattering across the forest, the sound of a dragonfly? This book has reminded me of what it’s like to be in a landscape which is full of life, rather than in a natural landscape without any movement but the flowing stream. It reminded me to observe not only what biodiversity is on an academic level, but what biodiversity feels like. And to study sustainability as a way to fight to preserve this sensation.