Hello! My name is Paulina Przybylski, but my friends call me PJ. I just finished my first year at The Pennsylvania State University main campus. I am a Schreyer honors student working toward a major in Geobiology and either a minor in Astrobiology or Entomology. I’m clearly still trying to figure out exactly what I want to do, but I do know that I love insects and am passionate about spreading information and awareness about insect declines.
As part of my honors requirements, I took an honors Rhetoric and Civic Life (RCL) course during my first two semesters of college. This class was like an English or public speaking course with a heavy emphasis on rhetorical strategies and civic engagement. Toward the end of spring semester, I was tasked with writing an issue brief aimed at an audience of officials and policymakers to prove that a chosen contemporary issue exists, convince them that they should care about it, and present them with suggested solutions backed by experts on the topic. Following the writing of this paper, I also needed to carry out a related advocacy project on the same issue as the brief.
My interest in insect declines and the ‘Insect Apocalypse’, as I came to know it, was piqued during my first semester Entomology course: Insect Connections (shoutout to Dr. Jared Ali for being such a cool and inspiring professor). So, when it was time to choose the topic of my civic issue blog for my RCL class, I decided to focus on the ongoing mass extinction event, including the issue of insect declines (you can find my blog here). Wanting to gain a better understanding of the issue and learn about possible solutions, I decided to continue my work in this area for the issue brief, which you can find here.
For my advocacy project, I wanted to do something focused on insect declines, because insects are perhaps the most important group of animals on our planet. Losing insect populations would be detrimental to all life on Earth and would cause the collapse of countless ecosystems because insects are the foundation of most terrestrial food webs and are crucial to many environmental processes upon which all life depends. It is necessary to address this problem and work to stop insect declines, but while talking with people as I started to work on this project, I learned several pieces of information that helped guide my focus. I learned that people were generally unaware of the ongoing mass extinction event, especially insect declines, and our discussion about it was the first they were hearing of this major issue. I also was reminded of the mental barrier many people have when it comes to concerning themselves with insects due to the conditioning they receive while growing up to be disgusted with or afraid of them. Therefore, I developed my advocacy project centered on community outreach to meet the following objectives: to spread awareness about insect declines and why people should care, to show people how cool and important insects are to our world, and to inspire an appreciation and respect for insects within people.
I began by meeting with Laura Porturas, the assistant curator of the Frost Entomological Museum on campus. I was invited to join her at the Earth Fest event hosted by Millbrook Marsh Nature Center to show and teach people about insects on behalf of the Frost Museum, and to talk about insect declines and ways everyone can help. Prior to the event, I did some research into ways that individuals can directly help insects. I learned and planned enough so I would be able to have conversations with people and answer questions about the topic.
At this event, I was able to talk with many attendees about insects. Visitors were largely little kids and their parents, who I presumed to already care about the environment to some degree since they were attending a festival for Earth Day. Based on the conversations I had, I think I was successful in showing people how cool and interesting insects are, and in explaining why insects are so important to our environment. If people mentioned their view of insects as pests, I focused on explaining what insects do for us to show why we need them and why it is necessary to protect them. If people expressed a fondness for insects, I focused on explaining how important they are and offering suggestions as ways to help support insect biodiversity right at home. Most of my conversations went in these directions, since I learned that it was more effective to use this opportunity to inspire an appreciation for insects within people, rather than overwhelming them with terrifying facts about insect declines. Since I was engaging with mainly kids and parents, it was harder to spend long talking about insect declines, but when I found the right people who would be receptive, I was able to share about the issue and ways that individuals can help directly in their communities and their own backyard. Some people shared what they were already doing to help pollinators in their yard, and some were very interested and asked questions about the strategies I proposed.
I am glad that I was able to talk with people face-to-face about this issue. It is harder to put yourself out there for this type of advocacy, but it is absolutely necessary to do so to really get people to listen to you about important issues. Given the nature of the event I attended, I had a very pleasant experience and many good conversations with guests as they visited the table throughout the entire duration of the event. I found this outreach event to ultimately be successful as I was able to speak with many people who care about protecting the environment and spread information and awareness about insect declines and how to help. I was most effective and successful in simply exposing people to the world of insects by letting them see how cool and beautiful insects are, and teaching them their importance mainly as pollinators, decomposers, and the base of food webs in terrestrial ecosystems across the world. People left the table being excited about insects and grateful to have stopped by to talk and see our displays up close.
Going forward, I plan to continue to be involved with the entomology department and museum at Penn State in relation to outreach centered on insect declines. I hope to find ways to continue advocating for this topic by spreading information and awareness of the issue to more people.
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