Conservation Awareness through an Environmental Education Programme in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil

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Abstract
Few environmental education programmes established in parks in Brazil have been formally evaluated. This paper describes the study of a school programme that was established to use formative evaluation to select and improve programme strategies, and employs summative evaluation to assess the effectiveness of the programme as a whole. The programme consisted of pre-visit strategies, such as a slide show and information given to teachers; on-site activities, which comprised Nature trails and a visitor centre; and post-visit materials furnished to the students at their schools. For the evaluation procedure, child students (N=144) from fifth to eighth grades were randomly assigned to treatment or control groups and answered a written questionnaire on three different occasions — pre-test, post-test, and memory-retention test. The results were statistically analysed and significant differences were assessed between the two groups (F=98.29, p≤0.05). A Scheffé Test demonstrated correlations and located significant differences among the variables. A reliability test was done on the written questionnaire (r=.77). Informally, the programme contributed to the conservation of the Park as it encouraged community involvement in helping to solve specific problems. The results of the Black Lion-tamarin environmental education programme suggest that such programmes in Nature parks and reserves can be effective and should be established far more widely. Awareness education programmes should be encouraged, especially in underdeveloped countries which still hold great portions of the planet's biodiversity. This education programme was beneficial to both students and members of the local community, who learned about the Park and became proud of it as their natural legacy, as well as to the Park itself of which the protection became enhanced through awareness and community involvement. The Black Liontamarin programme serves as an effective example to other sites with similar contexts and constraints.