In a recent survey, we investigated underlying values and narratives on biodiversity conservation in 454 undergraduate Biology students at the University of Valencia (UV), Spain, during the period 2015-2023. Students were asked to answer two questions regarding the following conservation dilemma (only an excerpt is shown here): “The North American ruddy duck is an invasive alien species in Europe whose population was founded by just seven birds escaped from captive stocks in the UK; this species now seriously threatens the native, highly endangered white-headed duck through hybridization. Please decide and justify (i) whether or not the ruddy duck should be eradicated in Europe if this is the only realistic way to preserve the white-headed duck, and (ii) whether or not your decision would be different if ruddy ducks had colonized Europe by themselves (i.e., ‘naturally’)”. Regardless of academic year, ca. one-third of students (more females than males) were against eradication based mainly on compassionate conservation arguments (i.e. a ‘first do no harm’ ethics), and ca. two-third of students held an ‘exemptionalist’ worldview as well, considering that human actions are not natural, thus their effects must be reversed, rather than be integrated or tolerated, in ‘truly’ natural landscapes. Here, we replicated this survey for 164 postgraduate students who had completed the “Master's Degree in Biodiversity: Conservation and Evolution” at the UV within the period 2008-2023.

We predicted that, compared with undergraduate students, postgraduate students:
(i) should strongly favour eradication of ruddy ducks in Europe because the master emphasizes the importance of conserving species and ecosystems, rather than individuals, and
(ii) should hold a more integrative view of the role of humans in the ecosystems.

Surprisingly, the proportion against eradication was similar between undergraduate (34.9%) and postgraduate (31.5%) students, although the latter put forward more reasons to hold this view. Furthermore, the proportion of female students against eradication was significantly high compared to male students regardless of group. Finally, both undergraduate and postgraduate students favoured an exemptionalist worldview but, as expected, the proportion was lower in the latter (71.3 vs. 64.0%). However, a significant proportion of the non-exemptionalist postgraduate students had taken an optional subject in the master that focuses on values and narratives in biodiversity conservation. Overall, these results seem to conform to the hypothesis that, in these students, conservation values are driven by ingrained moral intuitions (sensu Haidt), whilst narratives are challenged more easily by arguments.

Keywords: Biodiversity, conservation, postgraduate, master, moral intuition, narrative, invasive species.