Abstract: Most of the time, people view wildlife centers as a place to drop off a sick or orphaned wild animal. While this is an aspect of wildlife centers, their role in the community far exceeds just taking in animals. This paper explains how wildlife centers must maintain excellent communication methods both internally and externally to function as a place of rehabilitation for the animals and place of education for the community. I analyzed scientific articles on the educative success of wildlife centers as well as the Sacramento Wildlife Center website to pursue the different methods they use to communicate. I found that communication using the genres of articles, pamphlets, and websites were most beneficial in educating the public. By learning how wild animals live and behave in urbanized settings people are more likely to respond in humane ways and help preserve and protect these critical beings for the local ecosystems.
Introduction: Having and maintaining excellent communication skills is key in managing a wildlife center. Members of the wildlife center must talk with veterinarians, volunteers, other staff members, all while being available to help members of the public when they have an encounter with a wild animal. No matter the location, wild animals are everywhere, and wildlife centers are there to aid in the interactions with the outdoor neighbors. The goal of this paper is to educate people on how strong communication skills can be both a benefit to the people and the creatures in their community. This extends to people who are interested in working with wildlife or just someone who deals with wild animals on occasion. Professor of linguistics, John Swales defines a discourse community as a group of people who communicate with each other to achieve a certain goal, for example in this paper, wildlife centers (Swales 220). Using a multitude of different genres, wildlife centers can achieve their goal of educating the society in ways to humanely interact with wild animals and obtain new members of the community in the form of volunteers or donators. Joining this community allows people to appreciate wild animals in new ways.
Methods: To gain insight into the different methods of communication among wildlife centers and the public, I analyzed the website of the Sacramento Wildlife Center (SWC) to better understand their goals and evaluated two scientific articles describing experiments in gaining the public’s interest and knowledge around wild animals in their communities. One article written by Kramer, et. al (2016) included an experiment with elementary students who took a field trip to a local wildlife center and took notes, which were later analyzed to see what facts about the habitats and lives of the animals they remembered. The second article written by Sponarski et. al. (2016) was an experiment about people’s attitudes on a local wild predator, the coyote, before and after being educated on their role in the ecosystem. I also referred to Swales’ Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings to describe the concept of a discourse community. Each of these materials helped me gain insight into how this community utilizes forms of communication.
Results and Discussion Common Goals, Participation, Methods of Communication, and Multiple Genres According to Swales, an aspect of a discourse community is having common goals that members all work towards, in this case the goal being educating the public about wildlife around them, and then encouraging people to donate so that the wildlife center can continue to do important work for the community and environment (Swales 220). Every person is going to have some interaction with a wild animal, even if they live in the middle of a city, so it is important for them to understand what attracts animals and the humane ways they can evict the animals from their home if they make a nest or den. Education is a goal from this discourse community not only to teach people how to deal with animals, but also in the ways in which people can protect the environment. Some wildlife rescue centers give tours to students and the public to facilitate this. Researchers from Florida State University investigated what elementary school students learned from going to a wildlife museum about animals and their natural habitats, as well as reasons for conservation efforts. They found that by seeing live animals, including their natural behaviors and forms of communication, the kids were more interested in the animals and learning how to protect the species (Kasmer, et. al, 2016). Many wildlife centers give tours and let people see first-hand the animals that live around them and the problems they face in the current environment. This creates an emotional connection between the people and animals that makes them more passionate about the wildlife center’s cause and efforts.
There are several ways to get involved with this discourse community. Swales defines participatory mechanisms to be any form of communication that people use, and therefore creates the notion of members of a specific discourse community because they use those forms (Swales 221). People can become volunteers in the wildlife center and help gather supplies for the center or help with fundraising (SWC website). With different ways to get in contact with the centers, either by calling, emailing, or messaging through social media, anyone can easily join this community. By making it easy to get involved in the community of wildlife centers, the number of members can increase quickly and give many people the education and tools in learning how to deal with animals, a goal of this community. Another way to facilitate people getting involved with this community is by having them visit the center and being face to face with wild animals (Kramer, et. al., 2016). Also, active member engagement and an approachable and inviting center can make people more likely to donate and fund this community.
With so many ways of getting in touch with local wildlife centers, participation is used to spread the information from person to person, an additional criterion of a discourse community (Swales 221). When visiting wildlife centers people can take a tour and see the animals that are native to the area, but some centers provide programs to inform visitors of why they shouldn’t always fear wildlife around them and how to keep them at a distance. A wildlife center in Canada set up an experiment where they surveyed visitors before and after a multi-station coyote information session. They found that by having participants share their own personal experience with coyotes, seeing actual maps of tracked coyotes, and learning ways to defend themselves if they ever meet a coyote, the participants were less scared of coyotes than at the beginning of the experiment (Sponarski et. al., 2016). The findings show how using different education styles can influence people’s perceptions of wild animals and help them realize that although the animals may be powerful, they are an important aspect to the environment. This accomplishes the goal of educating members of the public and spreading the knowledge if this community. The last criteria that will be analyzed is the fact that a discourse community contains multiple genres used to communicate the information and goals (Swales 221). Wildlife centers are a prime example of this, with many centers having their own website, their own scientists writing articles discussing their wildlife biology research and having books and informational pamphlets made easily available to the public. From just the Sacramento Wildlife Center’s website people have access to social media pages, the means to donate, informational pamphlets about common animals, and can see the goals of the wildlife center (SWC website). Below is a screenshot of the home page from the Sacramento Wildlife Center’s website and then the first page of a document called “What to do about Skunks” also located from the SWC website:
These pictures show how the language is clear and concise, and is stated plainly, making it so everyone from kids to adults can understand how to deal with animals. The other genres of scientific papers can be used for education purposes to see what works best in educating the public.
Genre Analysis To answer the many questions of the public, the Sacramento Wildlife Center has many helpful pages on its website, as seen above. This website genre is informative and serves as an informational basis before calling the center if they have an interaction with a wild animal. By scrolling through and reading the different pages, they can discover how to humanely encourage the creatures to move somewhere else. The target audience is everyone who could potentially have an interaction with a wild animal, ranging from city folk to those who live in rural areas. Anyone can find this website and get information on how to handle situations with animals, find out how to donate, or ways to help the wildlife center. One can deduce that this wildlife center wants people to be aware of ways to handle situations with wildlife and how they can manage their property.
The tone is friendly but matter of fact as well, helping the public to understand the amount of time and effort it takes for animals to be treated, rehabilitated, and released. To write in this genre, one needs to be experienced with wildlife enough to know how common animals nest and live, but also needs to write in plain, yet direct English. This website needs to be easy to understand so that someone can immediately find out what do to or who to call. Using pictures of the animals is a useful way for people to identify outdoor critters if they are unfamiliar, and each of the tabs are clearly labelled and all the links work. People can opt to donate, find information about an animal, or find out ways to volunteer and help the center. They also incorporate social media websites such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram for more modes of passing along information. With many different options to choose from, almost any question can be answered by the website, and if not, there is always the option to call the center.
Conclusion: Without good communication, wildlife centers would break down and be unable to help as many animals and people as they currently do now. Wildlife centers use a variety of genres to communicate their ideas and allow people to participate. From the websites, scientific papers, and pamphlets it is clear that making the public more aware of how they can manage the wildlife around their homes is a major goal. By making it easy to become a member and pass along information through the website and tours, wildlife centers are able to achieve their goals of education and raising money. With so many different ways to become involved with wildlife centers, people are able to help take care of wild animals in many ways and promote the public’s awareness of the value of their local wildlife. After analyzing the Sacramento Wildlife Center’s website, I was able to learn more about this community and their objectives for the public. Understanding clear ways to communicate and convey information is important in this community and needs to be learned in order to succeed.
References: Kazmer, M. M., Alemanne, N. D., Mendenhall, A., Marty, P. F., Southerland, S. A., Sampson, V., Douglas, I., Clark, A., & Schellinger, J. (2016). "A good day to see a bobcat”: Elementary students’ online journal entries during a structured observation visit to a wildlife center.” First Monday, 21(4). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v21i4.6152
Sponarski, C. C., Vaske, J. J., Alistair J. B., & Loeffer, T. A.. (2016). Changing attitudes and emotions towards coyotes with experimental education. The Journal of Environmental Education, 47(4), 296-306, DOI: 10.1080/00958964.2016.1158142
Swales, John. (1990). “The concept of discourse community.” Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. (215-227). Boston: Cambridge UP.