Acknowledging a difficult reality: ecological knowledge is now so fragmented that it is often absent from everyday perception. The task is not only to encourage conservation, but to rebuild ecological literacy from the ground up.
The question is how to do that.
In conservation discourse, a familiar refrain appears: inspire a love of nature, because people protect what they love.
I do not think it holds.
Love is unstable as a foundation. It is uneven, selective, and easily shaped by projection. When it is treated as a requirement for care, it risks becoming a threshold that some will never cross, for reasons that have little to do with responsibility or attentiveness.
What often sustains protection is something quieter: understanding, familiarity, and a developed sense of respect for what is present and real. These are not less than emotion, but they are not dependent on it either.
There are many ways people come to act with care. Sometimes it is through attachment, sometimes through duty, sometimes through a clear recognition of interdependence. None of these need to be reduced to sentiment in order to be valid.
If love emerges from the process of understanding, it is a consequence rather than a condition. And when it does emerge, it is healthiest when it remains open, not possessive, not an idealization that replaces what is actually there.
The aim is not to require love as a gateway. It is to cultivate attention, understanding, and respect for the living world as it is.
