Citizen science has become a popular way to collect biodiversity data and engage the wider public in scientific research. It has the potential to improve the knowledge and skills of participants, and positively change their behaviour and attitude towards the environment. Citizen science outcomes are particularly valuable for wildlife conservation, as they could help alleviate human impacts on the environment. We used an online questionnaire to investigate the consequences of participating in an Australian turtle mapping app, TurtleSAT, on skills and knowledge gain, and test for any association between these gains and behavioural or attitudinal changes reported by the participants. One hundred and forty‐eight citizen scientists completed our questionnaire, mostly from the states of New South Wales and Victoria. TurtleSAT was the third most common source of correct answers about turtle ecology and conservation, after a talk about turtles and personal observations/research. Citizen scientists who participated more often were more knowledgeable about turtles than infrequent users. Self‐reported gains in knowledge and skills were positively linked to attitudinal and behavioural changes, such as being more aware of turtles on roads. However, behaviour and attitude changes were not related to participation rate. Respondents also reported that after learning about the current decline in turtle populations, they adopted several turtle‐friendly practices, such as habitat restoration or moving turtles out of harm's way, underlining the importance of increasing people's awareness on species declines. The reported changes in attitudes and behaviours are likely to positively impact the conservation of Australian freshwater turtles. Engagement with citizen science projects like TurtleSAT may result in participants being more interested in the natural world, by learning more about it and being more exposed to it, and therefore contributing more actively to its protection. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

Global conservation is increasingly reliant on young people forming meaningful connections with urban nature. However, interactions with nearby nature do not inspire all children and adolescents living in cities to act pro-environmentally. Our survey of over 1,000 school students from Sydney, Australia, revealed that 28% of respondents maintained strong nature connections. Younger students (aged 8–11) were more strongly connected with nature than their older peers (aged 12–14), and environmental behaviors were negatively associated with increasing age. Differences between boys and girls were less consistent, resulting in part from differential functioning of questionnaire items. Regardless, girls were more willing than boys to volunteer for conservation. Our findings suggest that policies designed to strengthen urban children’s nature connections will be most effective if they explicitly address the “adolescent dip” and other emerging demographic patterns, thereby ensuring all young people reap the health, wellbeing, and conservation benefits of connecting with nature.

In this global extinction crisis, we must act urgently to prevent the loss of species. The public plays a key role in ensuring the future of our biodiversity, by impacting funding decisions, creating behaviour change, and pushing change in corporations to prevent species loss. The Threatened Species Bake Off competition is a social media initiative created by the Australian Government in 2017 to raise awareness of nationally listed threatened species. In this study, we assessed the trends of the competition by collating entries via Instagram and Twitter in its first 5 years. Representations of 356 unique species were baked, 261 of which were listed as nationally threatened species. Birds and mammals were the most popular groups represented. Frogs, reptiles, fishes, and invertebrates were reasonably well represented; however, plants were drastically underrepresented in the competition. This is evidence of taxonomic bias towards the charismatic animals, and a problematic lack of representation of other threatened species that play essential roles in our ecosystems. Although the Bake Off is an innovative conservation messaging approach, it reinforces awareness of the same groups that traditional messaging techniques encouraged (i.e., charismatic megafauna). Public engagement in this competition reflects current conservation messaging, including media and education focus on charismatic animals, demonstrating engrained biases. Future competitions should address this by highlighting less popular but equally important threatened species, especially plants.

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Background In response to the US opioid epidemic, significant national campaigns have been launched to expand access to `opioid use disorder (MOUD). While adoption has increased in general medical care settings, specialty addiction programs have lagged in both reach and adoption. Elevating the quality of implementation strategy, research requires more precise methods in tailoring strategies rather than a one-size-fits-all-approach, documenting participant engagement and fidelity to the delivery of the strategy, and conducting an economic analysis to inform decision making and policy. Research has yet to incorporate all three of these recommendations to address the challenges of implementing and sustaining MOUD in specialty addiction programs. Methods This project seeks to recruit 72 specialty addiction programs in partnership with the Washington State Health Care Authority and employs a measurement-based stepped implementation-to-target approach within an adaptive trial design. Programs will be exposed to a sequence of implementation strategies of increasing intensity and cost: (1) enhanced monitoring and feedback (EMF), (2) 2-day workshop, and then, if outcome targets are not achieved, randomization to either internal facilitation or external facilitation. The study has three aims: (1) evaluate the sequential impact of implementation strategies on target outcomes, (2) examine contextual moderators and mediators of outcomes in response to the strategies, and (3) document and model costs per implementation strategy. Target outcomes are organized by the RE-AIM framework and the Addiction Care Cascade. Discussion This implementation project includes elements of a sequential multiple assignment randomized trial (SMART) design and a criterion-based design. An innovative and efficient approach, participating programs only receive the implementation strategies they need to achieve target outcomes. Findings have the potential to inform implementation research and provide key decision-makers with evidence on how to address the opioid epidemic at a systems level. Trial registration This trial was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT05343793) on April 25, 2022.