‘Maybe it’s all for nothing’: children’s Eco-Types and the geographies of a failed conservation project

Environmental education often relies on place-based projects to foster stewardship among young learners, yet the real-world impact of such initiatives remains uncertain. This study investigates the recommendations of 57 fifth-grade students (aged 10–11) at a primary school in northern Israel regarding the continuation of a Lesser Kestrel conservation project that has run since 1996 but failed to increase local kestrel populations. Adopting an interpretive qualitative approach, the research draws on individual position papers in which students reflected on their year-long involvement, constructing nest boxes, conducting field observations, and guiding community members, and articulated their stance on whether the project should proceed. These papers were analyzed deductively through an adapted ‘eco-types’ framework, which distinguishes five environmental orientations: Eco-Engaged, Self-Effacing, Optimists, Fatalists, and Indifferents. Findings reveal a heterogeneous distribution of student perspectives, 39% Eco-Engaged, 15% Optimists, 15% Self-Effacing, 23% Fatalists, and 9% Indifferents, that shaped varied recommendations, from insisting on project continuation to advocating its cessation. The study suggests that failed school-based conservation projects can diversify, rather than uniformly deepen, children’s environmental orientations, and foregrounds the emotional and geographical complexities that arise when local ecosystems do not respond to children’s care.