Bird conservation through the lens of ‘the Bird Village’

No matter how extensive bird conservation efforts may be, these often remain insufficient because the underlying humanistic connection between humans and nature is profoundly fractured. This paper examines how Bird Village, an imaginative world in Wild Wise Weird by Professor Vuong Quan Hoang, offers a pathway to address this deficit by nurturing deeper inner connections with the natural world. Specifically, it demonstrates how the imaginative world of Bird Village can cultivate ecological understanding, foster affective bonds, and expand moral conscience beyond anthropocentric boundaries. Furthermore, the paper explores how the Uncertainty–Absurdity Mutuality (UAM) proposition embedded in Bird Village can function as an epistemic tool to overcome order-induced blindness – shaped by ego, hubris, and entrenched belief systems, and more fundamentally rooted in an anthropocentric worldview – thereby enabling more harmonious coexistence with a natural world characterised by pervasive uncertainty. The analytical power of UAM in identifying, interpreting, and addressing paradoxes that permeate contemporary conservation practices, such as ‘loving’ birds through aviary keeping or ceremonial release, is also discussed.