Biodiversity is linked to people’s diversity, and nature lends itself to people who are different, says author Joe Harkness.
When Joe Harkness received a message from a friend about macerating moth abdomens to check their genitalia to identify the species, it sparked an idea for a new book about wildlife obsessions. But over time, this developed into a completely different book: a clarion call to embrace neurodiversity in the fight against the extinction crisis.
Across Britain, 15% of people are thought to be neurodivergent. In the process of writing Neurodivergent, By Nature, Harkness discovered that an estimated 30% of conservation employees were neurodivergent. Why?
“People like myself, especially those who are undiagnosed, probably found nature was their balm from a mental health perspective,” says Harkness when we meet beneath an awesomely peaceful ancient oak close to his home in rural Norfolk. “The other thing is, we’re different from what we’d define as neurotypical people. Therefore we like more odd things. Special interests. Nature lends itself to people who are different.”
He interrupts his own answers by repeatedly spotting micro-moths – his latest special interest – zipping across our path. “Did you see that? Is it a yellow shell? No, it’s another one of those mother of pearl moths. Sorry. They’re everywhere.”
Harkness’s full-time job is teaching autistic and other neurodiverse children, but he did not suspect he had ADHD until a fellow teacher said she thought he had. It took a further six years to obtain a formal diagnosis and access to medication that he has found extremely helpful.
Naturalists such as the broadcaster Chris Packham and the writer Dara McAnulty have flown the flag for neurodiversity in the environmental sector but Harkness interviews dozens of less celebrated conservationists who have undertaken pioneering work on everything from UN climate talks to saving the Seychelles black parrot and restoring pine marten populations.
Harkness, whose debut book, Bird Therapy, was a surprise self-published hit, explains well why neurodivergent people can prosper in ecological jobs.
But he also makes a strong case for the natural world needing a neurodiverse cohort of people to save it. Beside the ancient oak where we talk is a small, scruffy meadow, filled with a jumble of wild grasses, insects and the flit of birds. “There is biodiversity right in front of you,” says Harkness, pointing at the meadow. “You look at it one way, I look at it another way. Therefore, if we are trying to help it, we can bring different things to it. If you’re looking at it from a completely different angle because of how your brain is wired, you bring a different approach again.
“You cannot be creative and make change and do good things unless you utilise all the different skills of the people you work with. If you don’t have diversity of people, you don’t have biodiversity. You can’t have one without the other. They are intrinsically connected.”
More specifically, Harkness reveals how neurodiverse conservationists find their “superpowers” can make them uniquely effective at their job, with skills including lateral thinking, hyperfocus, memory skills and empathy, as well as having an aptitude for fieldwork.
The autistic ecologist Naomi Davis told Harkness their favourite aspect of the job was finding and categorising species. Both Davis and the consultant ornithologist Colin Everett speak of sensory superpowers helping their surveying work: detecting fragments of birdsong that everyone else misses; even hearing bats echolocating – calls that are usually far too high-pitched for adults to hear them.
Clearly, neurodiverse people can be vital champions for biodiversity, although Harkness is bluntly honest about his own ADHD. “I don’t feel like the symptoms I experience are helpful or conducive to wellbeing and peak performance at work,” he writes.
And some people are still wary of disclosing neurodiversity. He interviews Emma Marsh, an executive director at the RSPB, who did not reveal her later-in-life autism diagnosis to work colleagues for a while, although when she finally did, she was heartened by receiving such a positive response.
As Harkness explains, harnessing the skills of neurodiverse employees often requires changes in work practices. Fieldwork – in peaceful, natural settings – is one attraction for many neurodiverse conservationists, but office-based workers may require adaptations. One senior conservationist was given permission to conduct her meetings outdoors.
Is the conservation sector meeting the needs of its neurodiverse employees? “Approaches to neuro-inclusion across the conservation sector are fragmentary at best, with some areas of outstanding practice, and some terrible tales of discrimination and needs not being met,” says Harkness.
Although “a lot of what I found in the sector seemed really fantastic”, he says, “with a bit of digging, everybody [in conservation organisations] was open to the fact that they still have a lot of work to do. But neurodivergence is a relatively new concept. I wouldn’t expect them to be all-singing, all dancing with their practices yet.”
The conservation sector has repeatedly been criticised for being so white and Harkness says any assessment of its efforts to accommodate neurodiversity must look at “how well is it engaging everybody who has a protected characteristic”.
Harkness does not want neurodiversity to be a “DEI trend” that comes and goes. For meaningful change, he says, there must be more routes into conservation through apprenticeships and not just degrees.
Working as a senior teacher at an “outstanding” complex needs school, Harkness is fiercely critical of mainstream British education, and the multi-chain academy system in particular, for failing to meet the needs of both neurodiversity and nature. Without more nature-literate schooling, he says, many neurodiverse young people won’t be able to discover the balm of the natural world – or the well-fitting jobs available within it.
“If you need something different, you’re not going to get it,” he writes of the academy school system.
His own personal schooling experience was bleak. Lacking an ADHD diagnosis as a young person, Harkness was simply written off as a naughty child of a single parent from social housing.
When he got his belated diagnosis, did he grieve for how long it took? “What I really grieved for was my experience at secondary school,” he says. “Medication has completely changed my life for the better. It doesn’t for everyone but it’s worked for me. What if I’d had that in year 11? Would I have got my A-levels and gone to university? Would I be a completely different person? Do I want to be? No. But it’s grief for what I could’ve been.”
Article link: ‘Intrinsically connected’: how human neurodiversity could help save nature
