[PCA] Article: Pokémon Go: Benefits, Costs, and Lessons for the Conservation Movement

[Lindsey Riibe]

Authors of the paper, *Pokémon Go: Benefits, Costs, and Lessons for the
Conservation Movement *in Conservation Letters, illustrate the incredible
similarity of natural history observation and data collection employed by
conservationists to the smartphone game Pokemon Go. The authors address
this observation as a conservation opportunity. They ask the reader to
imagine if the Pokemon Go craze was in fact a citizen science project and
the level of global success that project could have wielded!

"It has even been calculated that if Pokémon Go players were identifying
real instead of virtual animals, they could collect as much data in 6 days
as has been collected in 400 years of natural history effort"

"Pokémon Go demonstrates that cleverly implemented AR games can reach
millions of people and trigger substantial levels of behavioral change. In
its basic features, the game has strong parallels to natural history
observation and encourages outdoor recreation, both of which can help to
establish interest in conservation and build conservation ethics"

Link to full article in Conservation Letters:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/conl.12326/full

News article on the paper by University of Oxford:
http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2016-11-16-what-can-pok%C3%A9mon-go-teach-world-conservation-0


-- 
Lindsey Riibe
Plant Conservation Program Assistant
Bureau of Land Management
Plant Conservation Alliance
<http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/prog/more/fish__wildlife_and/plants/pca.htm>
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