1 Implications for Environmental Education from Wildlife Valuations S. Ram Vemuri Charles Darwin University Darwin, NT 0909 AUSTRALIA Phone: +61-08-8946-6087 Fax: +61-08-8946-6777 Email: ram.vemuri@cdu.edu.au Abstract Appropriate valuations seem to be the main focus of Environmental education. However, in many instances, differences in environmental valuations stem from deep cultural constructs of what constitutes environment itself. Thus environmental conflicts may not be because there are irreconcilable claims or aspirations to the same perceptions of environment, but rather because there are fundamental differences in the way people perceive environments. Environmental educators must incorporate these differences in perceptions into the curriculum for effective decision-making to eventuate. This paper is concerned with one aspect of the environment, namely wildlife. In this paper, I wish to shed some light on differences in the way people perceive wildlife. I would suggest that the deep divide that exists in what constitutes wildlife plays an important role in its’ valuation. The paper will then trace out several implications for environmental education. It will conclude with a call for environmental educators to provide skills for different knowledge bases to develop comprehensive theories on which valuation can be based, rather than be confined to provision of valuation tools for environmental managers of the mainstream. Preamble I would like to begin this paper with a story. It is a story of a man who was born visually impaired. He falls in love with a sighted person and is convinced by one and all that he will be better off if he receives sight. A Neurosurgeon restores his sight and the real struggle for this man begins when he subsequently has to adjust to a new sense of perception that he was not used to. The trauma, the challenges and the ironical twists that dominate his life as he attempts to adjust to new perceptions is the basis of this paper. The man in the story was so much used to “seeing” other than by sight that he could not bring himself to do anything other than just that. He saw through other sensory perceptions than sight before and after he received sight. The significance of the story and the fundamental premise of this paper is that factors conditioning perception play a more crucial role in effecting change than change in perception per se. This applies to wildlife valuations. Even though new perspectives about wildlife are emerging which are increasingly being transformed into appropriate measures of value, somehow many seem to fall back into valuing wildlife the way they conventionally or traditionally were used to doing based on their discipline orientations. Economists, ecologists, developers and conservationists, by and large, accept the importance of valuing wildlife but at the same time they appear to be at crossroads while engaging in such pursuits primarily because of meaning they attach to wildlife and the approach they adopt to value it.