Monitoring Data and Public Perception Diverge – Especially When Species Abundance Increases

Environmental sciences aim to provide unbiased data for decision making, yet conservation management, and personal decisions often rely on perception shaped by experiences, information exchange, media exposure, and values. When monitoring data differs from people’s perceptions, unintended consequences (e.g. overlooked degradation, unacknowledged conservation successes) may occur. We compare long-term monitoring data of tree and bird abundance with self-reported perceptions, revealing mismatches in 74% of the cases as well as their drivers. Phenomena like shifted baselines and change blindness were prevalent. Importantly, when environmental data reported population increases, these were often overlooked or minimized, but when species declined, the two datasets were more consistently aligned. This highlights the need to base decision-making on long-term datasets that account for the mismatches in perception and monitoring data. Our study has implications for conservation science, restoration, and land management, recommending integration of long-term monitoring data to mitigate change blindness and shifted baselines.