It is well established that ecosystems bring meaning and well-being to individuals, often articulated through attachment to place. Degradation and threats to places and ecosystems have been shown to lead to loss of well-being. Here, we suggest that the interactions between ecosystem loss and declining well-being may involve both emotional responses associated with grief, and with observable impacts on mental health. We test these ideas on so-called ecological grief by examining individual emotional response to well-documented and publicized ecological degradation: coral bleaching and mortality in the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem. The study focuses both on one off events of coral loss and the prospect of continuing decline on the self-reported well-being of residents living within the ecosystem, visitors, and those whose livelihood is dependent on the marine resource: data from face-to-face surveys of 1870 local residents, 1804 tourists, and telephone surveys of 91 fishers and 94 tourism operators. We hypothesise that the extent to which individuals experience ecological grief is dependent on the meanings or intrinsic values (such as aesthetic, scientific, or biodiversity-based values), and is moderated by their place attachment, place identity, lifestyle dependence, place-based pride, and derived well-being. Results show that around half of residents, tourists and tourist operators surveyed, and almost one quarter of fishers, report significant Reef Grief. Reef Grief is closely and positively associated with place meanings within resident and tourist populations. By contrast respondents who rated high aesthetic value of the coral ecosystem report lower levels of Reef Grief. These findings have significant implications for how individuals and populations experience ecosystem decline and loss within places that are meaningful to them. Given inevitable cumulative future impacts on ecosystems from committed climate change impacts, understanding and managing ecological grief will become increasingly important. This study seeks to lay conceptual and theoretical foundations to identify how ecological grief is manifest and related to meaningful places and the social distribution of such grief across society.

Significance: Effective environmental policy requires public participation in management, typically achieved through engaging community defined by residential location or resource use. However, current social and environmental change, particularly increasing connectedness, demands new approaches to community. We draw on place attachment theory to redefine community in the context of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Using a large dataset on place attachment, our analysis of local, national, and international stakeholders identified four communities differing in their attachment to the reef and spanning location and use communities. Our results suggest that place attachment can bridge geographic and social boundaries, and communities of attachment could thus be leveraged to foster transnational stewardship, which is crucial to addressing modern sustainability challenges in our globalized world.

Iconic places, including World Heritage areas, are symbolic and synonymous with national and cultural identities. Recognition of an existential threat to an icon may therefore arouse public concern and protective sentiment. Here we test this assumption by comparing sentiments, threat perceptions and values associated with the Great Barrier Reef and climate change attitudes among 4,681 Australian and international tourists visiting the Great Barrier Reef region before and after mass coral bleaching in 2016 and 2017. There was an increase in grief-related responses and decline in self-efficacy, which could inhibit individual action. However, there was also an increase in protective sentiments, ratings of place values and the proportion of respondents who viewed climate change as an immediate threat. These results suggest that imperilled icons have potential to mobilize public support around addressing the wider threat of climate change but that achieving and sustaining engagement will require a strategic approach to overcome self-efficacy barriers.

People variably respond to global change in their beliefs, behaviors, and grief (associated with losses incurred). People that are less likely to believe in climate change, adopt pro-environmental behaviors, or report ecological grief are assumed to have different psycho-cultural orientations, and do not perceive changes in environmental condition or any impact upon themselves. We test these assumptions within the context of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), a region currently experiencing significant climate change impacts in the form of coral reef bleaching and increasingly severe cyclones. We develop knowledge of environmental cultural services with the Environmental Schwartz Value Survey (ESVS) into four human value orientations that can explain individuals’ environmental beliefs and behaviors: biospheric (i.e., concern for environment), altruistic (i.e., concern for others, and intrinsic values), egoistic (i.e., concern for personal resources) and hedonic values (i.e., concern for pleasure, comfort, esthetic, and spirituality). Using face-to-face quantitative survey techniques, where 1,934 residents were asked to agree or disagree with a range of statements on a scale of 1–10, we investigate people’s (i) environmental values and value orientations, (ii) perceptions of environmental condition, and (iii) perceptions of impact on self. We show how they relate to the following climate change responses; (i) beliefs at a global and local scale, (ii) participation in pro-environmental behaviors, and (iii) levels of grief associated with ecological change, as measured by respective single survey questions. Results suggest that biospheric and altruistic values influenced all climate change responses. Egoistic values were only influential on grief responses. Perception of environmental change was important in influencing beliefs and grief, and perceptions of impact on self were only important in influencing beliefs. These results suggest that environmental managers could use people’s environmental value orientations to more effectively influence climate change responses toward environmental stewardship and sustainability. Communications that target or encourage altruism (through understanding and empathy), biospherism (through information on climate change impacts on the environment), and egoism (through emphasizing the benefits, health and wellbeing derived from a natural resource in good condition), could work.

Minke whales comprise some of the most widely distributed species of baleen whales, some populations of which are still regularly targeted by commercial whaling. Here, we review the conservation status of common (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) and Antarctic (Balaenoptera bonaerensis) minke whale populations, against the backdrop of ongoing whaling operations and other anthropogenic threats, including climate change, entanglement in fishing gear, ship strikes, and noise pollution. Although some coastal minke whale populations have been studied in detail, others, which inhabit remote and ecologically sensitive locations, such as the Antarctic ice shelf, are among the least understood populations of marine mammals. The unresolved taxonomy of dwarf minke whales further highlights some of the existing knowledge gaps concerning these species. Due to their relatively small size and elusive behaviors, large uncertainties exist for almost all minke whale populations with respect to behavior, migratory routes and winter distributions, hindering effective conservation and management. However, recent advances in research technology, such as passive acoustic monitoring (PAM), unmanned aerial systems (UAS), multisensor recording tags, and machine learning assisted photo-identification, are increasingly being applied to study minke whales and their habitat, and are starting to open new windows into their life history and ecology. In future research, these non- and less-invasive methods should be integrated in larger-scale comparative studies aiming to better understand minke whale behavior, ecological interactions and their varying habitats to drive and support effective species conservation.