People feel emotionally connected with protected nature areas

People who live and work around protected areas – nature reserves with rules to safeguard species and habitats – see them as an integral part of daily life.

A recent study in Germany listened to people in five protected sites and traced how these places shape identities.

Instead of asking only what these sites do for wildlife, the researchers asked how farmers, foresters, conservationists, and visitors feel about the human-nature connections.

They found many ways that people depend on, think about, and feel part of nature in the landscapes they use each week. 

Their answers formed five storylines about learning, regional heritage, care, production, and collaboration that show how nature protection and human life are tightly linked.

People and protected areas

The work was led by Marion Jay, an environmental social scientist at the University of Göttingen. Her research follows how people relate to landscapes and how conservation decisions ripple through everyday life.

Worldwide, about one-sixth of land and inland waters, and roughly one-twelfth of the ocean, now lie inside regions that are documented as “protected and conserved nature areas.”

Many still miss conservation goals because rules often feel distant from nearby communities, as shown in a global report. 

In the Göttingen region, the team treated the five study sites as cultural landscapes, places where farming, forestry, and conservation have interacted over centuries. 

They chose forests, grasslands, and pond systems that mix rare habitats with work such as grazing cattle or harvesting wood.

Researchers see human nature connections as a key idea in sustainability science. Earlier work grouped these connections into material, experiential, cognitive, emotional, and philosophical types that now guide studies worldwide, summarized in a conceptual framework. 

Stories guide insight

To explore those connections, the team used a narrative approach – a method that studies personal stories to see how people make sense of their experiences with nature. 

They carried out in-depth, semi-structured interviews with residents, land managers, and visitors, asking about workdays, childhood memories, and quiet walks.

“We wanted to understand how people perceive their personal relationships with nature and how protected areas shape these bonds,” explained Jay.

Narrative methods are increasingly used in conservation research because they reveal viewpoints that standard surveys often miss and make complex tradeoffs easier to understand, as reviewed in a recent analysis. 

Stories capture not only what people do in a landscape, but also why those actions and places matter to them.

In Göttingen, the interviews showed that very different groups often share similar feelings about the same hillside or forest edge.

A hunter, a conservation volunteer, and a dog walker might disagree about rules, yet still describe the area as part of their home region.

How protected areas connect people

From the interviews, the researchers drew out five main narratives that describe how people connect to these protected areas. Each narrative highlights a different way people relate to the same fields and forests.

Protected sites become outdoor spaces to monitor rare species and see how management choices affect habitats.

Another narrative centers on regional heritage, where old grazing paths, community forests, and local place names keep history visible in the present landscape.

A third storyline highlights care, with interviewees describing protected areas as places to recharge mentally, move slowly, and notice details such as seasonal colors or quiet sounds. 

Some spoke about letting nature recover in former military zones while still needing space to walk, cycle, and clear their thoughts.

The multifunctional production narrative focuses on farmers and foresters who act as stewards, people who manage land responsibly for both livelihoods and ecosystems. 

Many linked their identity to caring for a particular pasture or forest stand, echoing wider work on local environmental stewardship in working landscapes, summarized in a global review. 

Everyday pressures

The fifth narrative centers on collaboration, where agri-environmental payments and long-running partnerships between administrations, farmers, and conservation groups keep extensive grazing alive on steep grasslands. 

Interviewees described how trust built over years can turn disputes about restrictions into joint projects, such as planning grazing regimes that support both rare species and viable farm businesses.

These stories show that biodiversity is not the only concern inside protected areas. People also weigh fairness, ownership, and recognition when deciding whether conservation rules feel acceptable.

Some interviewees welcomed protection rules because they brought funding to maintain steep slopes or remote forests when timber prices were low. 

Others worried that distant authorities decided how land could be used without valuing local knowledge, and one farmer said “we literally depend on the protected area” because subsidies make low intensity grazing possible.

The patterns in Göttingen match wider evidence that human nature connectedness, a measure of how strongly people feel part of nature, links to greener behavior and better health. 

When people use nearby protected areas often, they are more likely to support long term protection and adjust their habits.

Implications for future conservation

By weaving the five narratives together, the authors argue that protected areas in lived-in regions should be managed as multifunctional landscapes – places that combine conservation, production, recreation, and cultural meaning. 

The results suggest that policies work better when they respect local memories, knowledge, and emotions alongside ecological monitoring data from species and habitats. 

This requires participation processes where land users, residents, and authorities talk openly about conflicting values while still searching for shared outcomes.

Narratives from Göttingen also align with a broader push in conservation science to treat people-nature relationships as central to biodiversity policy, not an afterthought, as discussed in a wide overview. 

When people see themselves as partners in caring for protected areas, they are more likely to support rules and experiment with new forms of cooperation.

Looking ahead, the researchers point to practical steps such as long-term dialogue platforms, joint monitoring walks, and stable funding for small farms that keep traditional grazing and mowing alive. 

Together, these measures can help protected areas function both as safe places for species and as meaningful everyday settings for nearby communities.

The study is published in People and Nature.

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