What is it?

Guided nature walk is one of the most common type of activity in Singapore that many nature related organizations coordinate to help the general population to better understand the nature through walking with them at parks or nature reserves and explaining what they are looking at.

Many guided nature walk are completely free, held by environmental enthusiasts although they do require you to sign up before the event to ensure that they have a rough estimation of the group they are leading.

What to look out for when planning a nature walk?

Target Audience

Determine your target audience well. Are they adults or children? Do they already have a deep understanding of nature before attending this guided nature walk? It may be obvious to mention this but it is crucial that you have a rough understanding of the cognitive capabilities and knowledge of your target audience. If they are children or students who have not much prior understanding of nature, overloading them with information of the scientific names of plants will not keep them interested in the topic.

Keeping it relevant

Remember to implant certain statements about how nature is important to mankind as a whole. This can be done as you walk past certain plants or animals on the way. Sometimes, people think nature is just for aesthetic and does not have much practical use in our modern society. However, that is not true as there are many plants which provides many different uses.

For example, the justicia gendarussa or the willow-leaved justicia which can be found in Singapore contains a compound more powerful than the clinically used drug to counter HIV.

Human are innately egoistic and one of the ways to make them care about nature is to see how important nature is to humans.

Convenience

Where is the location of your nature walk? Is the location very inaccessible? Certain parks and nature reserves may be difficult or even costly to get to. The cost in terms of time, energy and money may deter people from participating in your nature walk.

Many experiments have proved that convenience is key to promote behaviours such as recycling. Making it convenient to go for your nature guided walk is important. If possible, arranging a transport could be one of the ways to increase the convenience. If the organization is tight on budget, perhaps working with other organizations such as the People’s Association for some of the nature guided walks can help. Especially for getting more participants and securing fundings.

However, it is important to note that having a cost to your nature guide is not inherently bad. In fact, due to cognitive dissonance, there is a chance that having a high cost to your nature guide may make their impression of the overall experience better. Cognitive dissonance is when there are two inconsistent attitudes, beliefs or thoughts. When there is a dissonance, there is a tendency for the individual to seek consistency to eliminate the dissonance. Therefore, if an individual did not like the experience of the nature guide, but have already spent a huge amount of their resources in terms of time, energy and money, they will tend to change their perception of the nature guide and feel that it is worth their resources to have went for the guide.

Children

Environmental education to children have been shown to be effective even for children. The characteristics of a guided nature walk makes it more effective than just brochures and videos. There is more sensory input for the children which makes it more stimulating for them to learn. Therefore it is important to also keep in mind that kids could be a potential target audience. In fact, this sort of guided nature walk is one of the best methods for kids to get engaged with nature or to reach out to them.