Written by Pieter-Jan Keleman
When conservationists think about biodiversity monitoring, they usually picture scientists, park rangers, or experienced fishers. Rarely do they picture children. During fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork between 2021 and 2024 in some mangrove villages of northern Guinea-Bissau, I expected to learn primarily from experienced fishers. Instead, some of my greatest teachers were children.
After school, they disappeared into the mangroves with homemade fishing lines, searched for (fiddler) crabs in the mud to use as bait, or headed towards their favourite fishing spots along narrow rice-field dikes. Naturally, I tried to keep up. After rainy days, that usually meant slipping spectacularly into the mud while the boys walked ahead without breaking stride. During the dry season, the same dikes became so hot under the afternoon sun that every step felt like walking barefoot on a hot griddle. The children barely noticed. By the time I had reached the fishing grounds, they had often already caught their first fish.
It quickly became clear that I wasn’t just trying to learn about the mangroves. I was still learning how to move through them as the children could.
When I arrived in Guinea-Bissau, I thought I had come to study mangroves and fish. I did not expect that some of my most important lessons would come from the children who caught the fish. What surprised me wasn’t simply how much children knew. It was that conservation research rarely asks what children know in the first place.
Conservation increasingly recognises local ecological knowledge (LEK) as an important source of information for biodiversity research, particularly in places where scientific monitoring remains limited, as is the case in Guinea-Bissau (Keleman et al., 2025). Yet researchers usually turn to experienced fishers and elders, assuming that ecological expertise is something that comes only with age. Children are rarely included in these conversations. Part of the reason lies in how conservation has traditionally understood expertise. We tend to associate ecological knowledge with age and experience, assuming children are still learning rather than already knowing. As a result, children’s observations and experiences often remain invisible, even though they spend countless hours interacting with the environments conservation seeks to protect.
This omission matters for more than scientific reasons. International human rights law recognises that children have the right to participate in environmental decisions that affect their lives and futures. Meaningful participation requires recognising children not only as future beneficiaries of conservation, but also as people who already possess knowledge and perspectives worth listening to. If children already hold valuable ecological knowledge, recognising both their knowledge and their right to participate in environmental decisions can make conservation stronger and more inclusive.
So perhaps we have been looking at children the wrong way. Instead of viewing them simply as future conservationists, what if we recognised them as conservationists today?
During my first month of fieldwork, I quickly realised that interviewing children was very different from interviewing adults. Many were shy, hesitant to answer direct questions during formal interviews, or worried about giving the “wrong” answer. Looking for a more engaging way to assess their knowledge, I began using laminated photographs of local fish species as visual prompts. One afternoon, I spread the photographs across the sandy village square in Elalab village. What I expected to be a simple research activity quickly became a community event. Children laughed, debated species names, corrected one another, and called friends over to join. Adults gathered too, watching the discussions and occasionally joining in. What began as a way to make children feel more comfortable became one of the most effective methods I found for documenting ecological knowledge.
By the time I organised the fish identification game, Elvis and I had already spent weeks fishing together in the mangroves. That growing friendship meant he was no longer simply participating in the research; he was helping to shape it. Before long, he became my self-appointed research assistant. Without me asking, he organised the photographs into neat piles, decided whose turn came next, translated my instructions for younger children, and made sure nobody peeked at anyone else’s answers. At one point he politely pointed out that I had forgotten to write down a participant’s result. By the end of the afternoon, it was clear that Elvis was running the activity more efficiently than I was.
I had expected hesitation. Instead, answers came so quickly that I struggled to keep up. Children debated fish names, corrected one another, and burst into laughter whenever someone confused two similar species. It was only later, back at my desk, that the numbers confirmed what I had already observed: the children identified most species with striking accuracy (Keleman et al., 2023). Their performance wasn’t simply impressive for their age; it demonstrated that children can contribute meaningful ecological knowledge to biodiversity research. Even more impressive was the confidence with which they explained their answers, some of them effortlessly switching between Diola and Kriol names while describing where the fish were found, how they were caught, or why similar-looking species differed. Their knowledge reflected years of everyday experience in the mangroves, not lessons learned from books or classrooms. Elvis stood out because of his confidence, not because he was unique. Across the villages, many children demonstrated the same remarkable familiarity with fish, fishing grounds, and mangrove life.
Watching the children, I realised I had been asking the wrong question. The issue was no longer whether children possessed ecological knowledge, but how they acquired it so naturally. They were not memorising fish names in classrooms. They were learning through everyday life in the mangroves, where fishing, play, work, and observation blended. The mangroves were their classroom.
That was when I began to understand what I meant by calling children conservationists. They were not conservationists because they belonged to environmental organisations or had received formal training. They were conservationists because their everyday lives depended on understanding and caring for the mangrove ecosystems around them.
Looking back, this may have been the most important lesson of my fieldwork. Like many conservation researchers, I had assumed ecological expertise belonged mainly to adults. Instead, I found children who were already observing, interpreting, and contributing to knowledge about their direct environment. For conservation, that matters because children are often among the people who spend the most time outdoors. Their daily observations can complement scientific monitoring and provide insights into environmental change that researchers might otherwise miss.
As my research continued, another lesson became clear: knowledge is never evenly distributed. When my research expanded into neighbouring Diola communities such as Elia village, I noticed something else. Not every child knew the same things. Their knowledge reflected local livelihoods, daily activities, and opportunities to interact with nature rather than age alone (Keleman et al., 2026). Girls whose families collected oysters recognised different fish and shellfish species from boys who spent more time fishing in rice-field canals or paddling through mangrove creeks. Their knowledge reflected the rhythms of daily life: the places they explored, the work they helped with and the experiences they shared with family, peers and friends.
During fieldwork, I also realised that my research methods reflected the same assumptions. I had planned interviews with adults first, expecting them to be the primary holders of ecological knowledge. Children entered the project almost by accident. Conventional interviews often made them hesitant, so I adapted my approach by using photographs, informal conversations, and familiar settings such as homes, schools, and village gathering places. Instead of expecting children to adapt to my research, I had to adapt my research to them. That adaptation wasn’t only about using photographs instead of formal interviews. It was about spending time together, building trust, and allowing genuine relationships to develop. Those relationships opened conversations that formal interviews never could.
Instead of asking:
“How can we teach children about nature?”
We might first ask:
“What can children already teach us about nature, and what might conservation learn by listening?”
Their childhood had its roots in the mangrove landscape. Mine certainly did not. Every trip into the mangroves reminded me that what looked effortless to the children had taken years of practice. They could balance on narrow dikes, read the tides and navigate muddy creeks instinctively, while I was still trying to stay upright. The mangroves were their classroom, their playground; and, increasingly, mine too. The only difference was that most of my teachers were young enough to find it highly entertaining whenever I slipped into the mud.
Of course, childhood is shaped by place. Rural children who spend time outdoors often develop intimate knowledge of local plants, animals, tides, and seasons, while many urban children have fewer opportunities for sustained contact with nature. Their knowledge thus reflects the environments they inhabit rather than any difference in curiosity or ability. If we want future generations to care for biodiversity, creating opportunities to experience nature may be just as important as teaching children about it.
On one of my trips through the mangroves, I watched a group of boys quietly scanning the water ahead of the canoe. Without saying a word, they already knew where to cast their lines.
I was still learning.
That moment has stayed with me ever since. It reminded me that conservation does not begin only in classrooms, research institutes, or protected areas. Sometimes it begins with children who have spent years learning from the places they call home. Before we ask how to teach children about nature, perhaps we should first ask what nature has already taught them.
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More about the author:
Dr. Pieter-Jan Keleman is an environmental scientist whose research explores the relationship between people, biodiversity, and local ecological knowledge in coastal West Africa. His work focuses on how children develop and transmit ecological knowledge, demonstrating the important role they play as knowledge holders and contributors to biodiversity conservation. Through ethnobiological research, he aims to better understand how culture, environment, and childhood intersect to support more inclusive and sustainable conservation practices.
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References:
Further Reading
Keleman, P.-J., Sá, R. M., & Temudo, M. P. (2023). Rooted in the Mangrove Landscape: Children and their Ethnoichthyological Knowledge as Sentinels for Biodiversity Loss in Northern Guinea-Bissau. Ethnobiology Letters, 14(2), 10–21. https://doi.org/10.14237/ebl.14.2.2023.1826
Keleman, P.-J., Durand, J.-D., Simier, M., Camará, A., Sá, R. M., & Panfili, J. (2025). eDNA-based seasonal monitoring reveals fish diversity patterns in mangrove habitats of Guinea-Bissau, West Africa. Regional Studies in Marine Science, 82, 104013. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rsma.2025.104013
Keleman, P.-J., Nacutum, L. N. O., Mané, A. B., Sá, R. M., & Temudo, M. P. (2026). Species Naming as Child’s Play? Generational and Gendered Knowledge of Fishery Resources in Bissau-Guinean Mangroves. Ethnobotany and Economic Botany. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12231-026-09666-4
