Watching hundreds of people rush into Central Park at midnight, shouting and staring at their phones, in search of a virtual aquatic creature called Vaporeon, has a subtly unsettling quality. No one raised their heads. The great horned owl perched above the entire spectacle, unimpressed, and the raccoons watching from the tree line went unnoticed. Since Pokémon Go’s release in the summer of 2016, conservationists have been debating whether getting people outside truly matters if the outdoors is merely a platform for something else. That night became a sort of symbol for that question.
Pokémon Go accomplished something truly amazing. In the first two months, over 500 million downloads were made. It pulled retirees, office workers, and teenagers from their couches and into parks, wetlands, and nature reserves they had never bothered to visit before. Near rivers and coastal paths, players began to appear pursuing water-type Pokémon. People were drawn to woodland areas by grass types. The game subtly taught players that different environments produce different species—that habitat matters—without explicitly identifying itself as an educational tool. This was either a miracle or a lifeline for a conservation movement that has fought for decades to get people outside. Oxford, Cambridge, and UCL researchers published on the topic because they thought it was important.
They discovered something truly complex. On the one hand, Pokémon Go was accomplishing something that conservation efforts and wildlife apps had mainly failed to do: it made exploration feel rewarding and urgent. The game’s mechanics—collecting, exploring, and the excitement of discovering something uncommon—reflect nearly exactly what motivates amateur naturalists and birdwatchers. Pokémon Go was “only one step removed” from birdwatching, according to one researcher. That framing remained. It implies both closeness and distance. A single step is still a step.
A portion of the story is revealed by the numbers. According to a back-of-envelope calculation by researchers at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Pokémon Go players could have recorded more species in six days than naturalists had over the preceding 400 years if they had been documenting real wildlife rather than virtual creatures. That is a substantial amount. Although there are already apps for recording wildlife, such as butterflies, dragonflies, and ladybirds, their widespread use has never come close. Real animals move before you can take pictures of them, and it can be challenging to identify different species. Pokémon are labeled and do not flee.
Beneath all of this is a more subtle and difficult-to-measure concern. Eight-year-olds could recognize 78% of Pokémon species but only 53% of common British wildlife, according to a now-famous study by conservation scientist Andrew Balmford from 2002. The weak link between the two—knowing your Pokémon did not predict knowing your birds—was more concerning. It’s not as easy as you might think to transfer enthusiasm from one to the other. The fictional animals were purposefully created to be as attractive as possible. Actual species weren’t. When it comes to pure visual charisma, a pied flycatcher cannot match Dragonite, and this asymmetry has repercussions.
What happens when the phone dies is another issue. When a person’s battery runs out while chasing digital creatures in a meadow, do they lie in the grass and look up at the sky, or do they immediately go to the closest plug? It seems like a minor issue. Most likely it isn’t. Some conservationists are concerned—and rightfully so—that augmented reality games subtly convey the idea that the natural world must be improved in order to be worthwhile. In some way, that unadulterated, unhurried nature is inadequate.
Whether Pokémon Go ultimately aided or subtly hindered a deeper interaction with wildlife is still up for debate. The game produced real-life moments; the Twitter hashtag #Pokeblitz became a collection of real wildlife photos taken by players who happened upon something authentic and had the urge to record it. That is not insignificant. Some researchers have proposed altering these games so that fictional species coexist with real ones or that game characters are purposefully positioned in isolated environments that players would not otherwise seek out. Although it hasn’t been tried on a large scale, the concept has potential.
More than anything else, Pokémon Go showed that there is a desire to connect with nature. For the opportunity to experience something new, millions of people were prepared to stand in the rain, walk miles, and lose sleep. Field botanists and ornithologists are motivated by the same impulse. How to reroute it—before the virtual world becomes the only one people bother to look at—remains a challenge for conservation science.
