Category Archives: University of Northampton

Nature Improvement Area Annual Forum 2014 – influencing the future of conservation in England

The Nature Improvement Area (NIA) Annual Forum took place in London yesterday and the Nene Valley NIA was well represented, with five of us from the University of Northampton attending, plus representatives from our partners in the Wildlife Trust, the River Nene Regional Park, the RSPB, and the River Restoration Centre. It was an opportunity to see and hear what the twelve NIAs have achieved in the two and a half years since their inception, to compare notes, and (importantly) to think about the future of the NIAs.

The NIAs, as I’ve mentioned before, were meant to be pilot, flagship schemes to show how the future of conservation in England could become bigger, better and more connected across large swathes of landscape. Their origin lies in the Lawton Report and Professor Sir John Lawton kicked off the day with a general introduction that, from the very beginning, brought up the one thing on everybody’s mind that day: the financial sustainability of the NIAs. The money runs out in March 2015, so where do we go from there? All of the NIAs (ourselves included) have been applying for funding to continue the good work being done, but, as John Lawton, pointed out, if the Government is serous about the NIAs and wishes them to continue, there needs to be an investment of public money. I deliberately use the term “investment” because we know that the natural environment of our islands plays a significant role in public health and the national economy more broadly.

John Lawton’s introduction was followed by a short speech by Lord de Mauley, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for natural environment and science (who, incidentally, gave a nod in his speech to the National Pollinator Strategy). The Minister said a lot of the right things, how impressed he was with the NIA programme, that the government was committed to it in practice (but not necessarily financially), etc., etc. There followed another speech by Andrew Sells, Chair of Natural England, who listed some of the achievements of the NIAs (see below), including the fact that for every £1 of Government funding, £3.50 was leveraged from other sources to support the activities of NIAs across the country.

There was an opportunity to ask questions of the first two speakers, plus representatives from the Environment Agency and Forestry Commission, the first of which came from our own Oliver Burke who asked about the government’s vision of the future of the NIAs. All of the panel agree that there was a future, they just were not sure what it was, though there was commitment from Natural England (NE) and the Environment Agency (EA) that their staff would continue to advise and support NIA activities as part of their core activities. That’s promising though perhaps not surprising given the nature of most of the partnerships, involving organisations that the NE and the EA would normally work with anyway.

The question I wanted to ask, had I found the right form of words, would have been about the current Government’s poor record on the environment. But by the time I worked out a way of saying it that didn’t make it sound like a simple attack on the coalition, the opportunity was over. A whistle-stop tour by the Minister and his coterie of the displays set out by the NIAs followed, which John Lawton later said had visibly impressed Lord de Mauley. Amongst the achievements of the twelve NIAs, after only two years of activity, are:

Tens of thousand of hectares of priority and other habitats created, restored and/or improved in condition
Hundreds of kilometres of boundary and linear habitat (e.g. hedgerows) restored/created/improved
Tens of thousands of days of volunteer time devoted to the NIAs
Thousands of people participating in educational visits.
Thousands of hectares of habitat managed specifically for ecosystem services such as improving water quality.

After lunch there were further talks including one from Simon Smith about the Cotswolds Ecological Networks project which had been one of the 70 applicants for NIA funding, was unsuccessful, and (impressively) went ahead with the project anyway as an “unofficial” NIA. The Nene Valley NIA’s interactive website and photography competition was also highlighted in a talk by Helen Ashley from Dialogue by Design, and Dr Andy Stott from Defra discussed the monitoring and evaluation report for year 2 of the NIA programme.

Later in the afternoon we had a workshop at which, in small groups, we brainstormed some pressing questions, including (not surprisingly) innovative funding streams, and using the evidence base to demonstrate the effectiveness of the NIAs. With regard to the latter it would seem sensible to use independent, long-term monitoring data such as the repeated species counts done by Butterfly Conservation (e.g. Big Butterfly Count) and the British Trust for Ornithology (e.g. Breeding Bird Survey) to verify whether or not the NIAs are being effective, though this of course requires that surveys have historically taken place within the NIAs (something that is certainly true for the Nene Valley NIA). This would require quite a bit of coordination with the NGOs concerned, but should be doable. I’d happily develop such a project if there’s someone out there with funding!

And then, with some final, supportive words from John Lawton, the day was over and we started to disperse out into an unseasonably warm mid-September London. Several of us from the Nene Valley and the RSPB decamped to a great local pub (The Lord John Russell) to discuss the day. One of the topics that everyone was talking about was, of course, the Scottish Referendum. As I write this the country is absorbing the news that Scotland is to remain part of the UK. As far as I’m concerned that’s a very good thing because (amongst other reasons) I think that a vote for independence would have negatively affected conservation in the British Isles. Political focus of all government departments would move from environmental issues and on to trying to manage the split, which would take up a huge amount of time and resources that could be better spent elsewhere. And NGOs such as the RSPB would have to devote time and resources to considering how they manage and fund their organisations, given their cross-border roles. That could have been to the detriment of Scottish conservation given that most of the funding is flowing south to north (which is purely a function of population size – there are many times more members in England and Wales than in Scotland).

Thank you Scotland, you’ve done the right thing. And thank you to all 12 NIAs, you’ve shown the Government how successful large-scale nature conservation can be: let us hope they take notice.

How do YOU value the Nene Valley?

1 Reply

Following on from my recent post about how contrasting ways in which to value nature, today sees the launch of a new interactive web site that is asking people which areas of the Nene Valley they value, and why. There is also a photography competition with a chance to win pairs of binoculars. The website link is:

www.nenevalleynia.org

Here’s the text from today’s joint University of Northampton/Wildlife Trust press release:

The Nene Valley Nature Improvement Area (NIA) project has today launched a new interactive website, which aims to encourage people to share their views on the local natural environment.

Covering over 41,000 hectares across Northamptonshire, Huntingdon and Peterborough, the Nene Valley Nature Improvement Area features a variety of natural habitats, including wildflower meadows, wetlands, marshes, woodlands and wet grasslands. With fishing lakes, bird watching opportunities and children’s adventure playgrounds, the NIA is an attractive area for animals – such as otters, kingfishers and grass snakes – to call home.

Researchers from the University of Northampton have joined forces with conservation organisations and the national Sciencewise initiative to launch the new NIA website, which features a wealth of information, a virtual tour and a discussion forum.

The website provides an opportunity for local people to share their thoughts on the Nene Valley, and an online mapping survey has been developed to identify areas of the valley that are particularly valued and why these areas are important to visitors. This will provide University researchers with valuable data that can be used to inform future plans for the valley.

A photo competition has also been launched to find some of the best images of the Nene Valley and to encourage people to explore the area over the summer. Judges are looking for images of wildlife, landscapes, people, heritage, water, and the built environment taken in the Nene Valley. There are separate categories for children so everyone can enter. Images should be submitted through the NIA website, and the winners will be selected through an online vote. The most popular photos will be displayed in the Autumn as part of the Nene Valley Festival, and the photographers of the top two images will each win a pair of Opticron binoculars. The competition closes for entries and voting at 5pm on 30 September.

Project co-ordinator Heather Ball from the Northamptonshire Wildlife Trust commented: “The new website is a great way to have your say about what goes on in the Nene Valley and share some fabulous images.”

University of Northampton researcher Dr Jim Rouquette added: “We need to gather information on the local places that people particularly value and the benefits that people gain from visiting. By better understanding what is important to different people, we can start to target conservation efforts and ensure that local knowledge and values are incorporated into decision-making.”

If you would like to contribute to this important project or take part in the photo competition please go to: www.nenevalleynia.org

How do we value nature? Costanza, Monbiot and the clash of concepts

6 Replies

Is nature something that we should simply value for its own sake? Or should we take account of how nature supports our society and our economy in real financial terms? Back in 1997 Australian academic Robert Costanza and colleagues published a now classic paper in the journal Nature called “The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital” that proved to be hugely influential and has been cited more than 3,500 times by other researchers in ecology, conservation, and ecological economics. Soon after publication I began to use the paper in some of my classes, asking students how they felt about putting a monetary ($) value on how nature supports ecosystem services such as soil formation, pollination, carbon storage, climate regulation, etc. Opinions were mixed, reflecting the fact that economic valuation of nature is controversial in theory, difficult to do in practice, and results in vast estimations of the “worth” of nature that seem to be fantastical. The Costanza et al. study, for example, suggested that ecosystem services were worth $33 trillion per year to the global economy, a figure almost twice as large as the Global GDP at the time!

More than a decade and a half later, Costanza has published a follow up paper that updates the figures in the 1997 paper and arrives at a global valuation of natural capital of between $125 and $145 trillion per year, depending on assumptions made about changes to the area of biomes such as temperate forest, grassland, coral reefs, etc. This last point is critical as loss of biome area due to changes in land use from agriculture and urbanisation has resulted in an estimated loss of ecosystem services of between $4.3 and $20.2 trillion per year between 1997 and 2011. That’s a big change and, if nothing else, gives an indication of how we are altering the face of the planet at an ever faster rate, something I will come back to later in this post.

In this new paper Costanza and colleagues have also responded to some of the criticisms of the earlier work, particularly by journalist and activist George Monbiot who, as I’ve previously discussed on this blog, has a genuine, but I feel misguided, aversion to the whole notion of ecosystem services and natural capital. Monbiot’s been repeating these criticisms in a lecture, a video and text of which is available on the Guardian website. I won’t go into a detailed discussion of his position, some of which I agree with, but I do believe that his major criticisms fail on two points.

The first is that Monbiot mixes up some very different concepts, bundling ecosystem services (a reasonable way of thinking about nature in relation to society) with biodiversity offsetting (a load of bollocks), green infrastructure (the importance of green space to urban development), carbon trading (dubious in theory and practice), and payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes (which can work on a regional scale, as in the case of South West Water’s upland catchments project), as if they were all the same thing, which they are not. In the Nene Valley NIA Project, for example, we are using an ecosystem services approach and are trying to develop a PES, but are wholly against biodiversity offsetting.

The second is that Monbiot sees all of this as some kind of neoliberal agenda to sell off the natural world to the highest bidder. That’s really not the case and ecosystem services are being promoted as a concept by conservationists, NGOs and scientists whose motivation is saving the natural world, not selling it. As Costanza et al. (2014) rightly state: “It is a misconception to assume that valuing ecosystem services in monetary units is the same as privatizing them or commodifying them for trade in private markets”

In his lecture Monbiot uses the classic rhetorician’s device of using partial quotes to support his point. For example he quotes Dieter Helm as saying that:

“The environment is part of the economy and needs to be properly integrated into it so that growth opportunities will not be missed”.

Sounds bad, I agree. But the full quote actually gives a very different and more profoundly “green” message:

“Over the coming decades, there will be a major programme to develop the UK’s infrastructure. The National Infrastructure Plan 2013 sets out ambitious plans – for new railways, roads, airport expansions, energy systems, water resources, sewerage investments, flood defences and a major increase in house building …….. In taking forward this major investment, it is important not to lose sight of natural infrastructure and the integral part that natural capital plays in delivering sustainable economic growth. …… the environment is part of the economy and needs to be properly integrated into it so that growth opportunities will not be missed. Integrating the environment into the economy is hampered by the almost complete absence of proper accounting for natural assets. What is not measured is usually ignored.”

Monbiot does make some good points in relation to how power can trump any environmental monetary valuation, and how political influence works, but his solution of “mobilisation”, is most effective at a relatively small scale, for example the defeat of Derby Council over plans to develop a nature reserve. Mobilisation by passionate environmentalists has failed to protect large swathes of Brazil’s natural environment, but arguments about the link between vegetation and rainfall, underscored by financial assessments of agricultural crop reductions, just might.

What is interesting about the lecture (which I encourage you to watch, Monbiot is a great speaker and it’s more entertaining than the transcript) is that not one of the audience questions afterwards actually dealt with the main topic of the lecture, namely the pricing of nature. Is that because he won over the audience completely with his arguments? Or is it because the ecosystem services approach to nature conservation is too recent a concept for its technicalities to have embedded themselves within public consciousness, and a general audience such as this might not feel confident enough to make challenging comments? I suspect the latter because whenever I give public lectures to gardening and wildlife groups, for instance, I always ask who has heard of “ecosystem services”, and invariably it’s a minority of the audience.

If Monbiot was correct and it’s possible to sell off natural capital in the way he describes, then we would expect the coalition UK government, for one, as well as big business, to buy into the concept wholeheartedly and to invest much more than they currently do in order to make a quick buck out of biodiversity. But they aren’t, and in fact this government has a track record that shows it has only the most cursory of interests in the UK’s natural ecosystems, and is willing to ignore scientific evidence to placate special interest groups who happen to be Conservative Party supporters (witness the recent badger cull debacle and the lack of action over illegal activity on grouse moors).

This is no doubt a debate that will continue but time is running out for the natural world and we don’t have many options: in Table 3 of Costanza et al. (2014) the authors present worrying data on how some biomes have greatly reduced in area since 1997 (e.g. coral reefs, wetlands) whilst croplands and urban settlement has increased. That can’t go on: the natural world is too valuable, in all senses of that world, to lose, something I’m sure George Monbiot would agree with even if he doesn’t believe that monetary valuation is the way to do it.

A day of contrasts

2 Replies

Some students pass through the university system barely touching the sides: they arrive, they study, they graduate, and they are gone, fate and whereabouts unknown. Other students stick in our minds, sometimes in our lives, because of their personality, their abilities, or their personal issues, and are remembered and talked of long after their graduation. They may go on to become friends and stay in touch, perhaps via social media such as our Department’s Facebook group.

These are just two extremes of a continuum of course, and whatever type of student they were, we hope that they all enjoy their time at university and go on to lead full and happy lives.

This was on my mind last Thursday, a day of contrasts. In the morning I joined colleagues on the stage at Northampton’s Derngate Theatre to watch as this summer’s graduands filed across the stage, shook hands with the Vice Chancellor, received their certificates, and left the stage as graduates. The accompanying applause from family, other students, and staff was constant and genuine: everyone wishes these new graduates well in their futures.

Chatting with a group of them afterwards, it was clear that a number have a good idea of what they wish to do, though others are less sure. One will be heading to Tanzania for a month of fieldwork with the Tropical Biology Association, an organisation I’ve become involved with over the last few years. Others are planning to work for the summer then launch into Master’s degrees. Some have already found jobs and are beginning their careers. Lots of possibilities and uncertainties, an exciting time for them. It was the kind of morning that made me realise how the work we do as university lecturers and researchers changes the lives of individuals, hopefully for the better.

These thoughts were reinforced in the afternoon when my colleague Janet Jackson and I attended the funeral of one of our 2006 graduates, Nick Wallis. It could have been a very sombre event, but it was not, thanks mainly to Nick himself and the way he interacted with people. Nick was a student who stuck in our minds, in part because of his intelligence, his passionate interest in the natural world, his willingness to ask questions, and his dry, sardonic wit. Nick was also the most physically disadvantaged student we have ever taught: muscular dystrophy had confined him to a motorised wheelchair and he had limited movement of his body. So we had to accommodate Nick’s disabilities but also had the opportunity to get to know him and enjoy his contributions to class discussions and the life of the Department.

Nick’s funeral was well attended, St Luke’s church in Kislingbury packed with family, friends, and neighbours. His brother Tom read a moving tribute, and the reverend, who had known Nick for some time, gave a heartfelt account of his life and personality, his love of gardening and of the natural world, his sense of humour. He also touched upon Nick’s controversial, though widely admired, decision to write about his own views and experiences of relationships, intimacy and sex as a profoundly physically disabled man. It was a tremendously brave thing for Nick to do and aired important issues that are still largely ignored by our society. Yes, Nick was certainly one of those students we were guaranteed to remember.

That evening I headed to London to catch up with some of my old university friends, a group of mates I’ve written about in the past. In the pub we talked families and jobs, politics and recent news; and friendships, about how the friends you make at university tend to be the ones that remain closest to you for the rest of your life. Twenty five years after graduation we are still able to enjoy one another’s company, something we all value in ways that we can’t always express.

So to this year’s summer graduates, the best of luck to you, and whatever you do now, don’t forget the friends that you’ve made during your time at Northampton.

And to Nick, thanks for being part of our lives; rest in peace.

7 minutes is a long time in science, 7 goals is a big win in football (BES Macroecology meeting day 2)

From Chester to Copenhagen

3 Replies

P1110838

It is 6.30am on Sunday morning but I’m wide awake and can hear the hotel in which we are staying stirring into life. Time to reflect on what has been a long and busy week, rather than the start of a long and relaxing summer holiday as some assume academics enjoy. That’s a myth: summers for many of us are at least as busy as the main teaching part of the year, though that’s not to say we don’t teach in the summer – I have final year project students to advise, and for students who did not pass first time round there’s still re-sit exams and assignments to be undertaken.

Of course I’m not complaining and the busyness is part of the fun of my job, which includes opportunities to travel, as I’ve previously described on this blog. Before any travelling this week, however, Monday was taken up listening to my PhD student Kat Harrold give a seminar about the progress of her research on pollinator mapping and habitat modelling in the Nene Valley Nature Improvement Area. This was followed by an hour’s grilling from the supervisory team and an independent colleague, as we drilled down into the research and suggested ways in which Kat could improve on the already excellent work that she’s doing. All of this is a formal part of our PhD programme and Kat aquitted herself very well indeed.

Tuesday was the start of the travelling, and was spent in Chester helping with filming for an episode of a new four-part BBC2 series provisionally called Plant Odyssey, fronted by Carol Klein, Gardener’s World presenter and Honorary Fellow of the University. The series is being produced by Oxford Scientific Films and will be broadcast in the spring. In the following scene we were making a rose perfume based on an ancient Roman recipe from the writings of Pliny the Elder.

Now, I know very little about how to make perfume, but I do know a bit about flower scents and how they attract pollinators, so my role was to act as both a foil for Carol’s scent experiment and to add some science to the mix. This is not the first filming I’ve done with Carol, having also helped out with her Science in the Garden special edition of Gardener’s World a few years ago. While looking for that last link I discovered that all three episodes of Bees, Butterflies and Blooms is also available on YouTube, which is great to see as the BBC didn’t repeat the series or produce a DVD. I was involved in the making of episode 2, which helped to kick-start the RHS’s Perfect for Pollinators plant labelling campaign. Television work is fun and brings science, and the scientists who do it, to a much wider audience.

Wednesday I prepared my talk for Friday’s lecture in Copenhagen (more of which later) and Thursday involved attending the University of Northampton’s annual postgraduate research conference. This is a highlight of the year for me as it’s an opportunity to see the breadth of postgraduate research going on across the university, something that would be impossible in a larger and more research intensive institution. I was only able to attend the first session, but that alone covered research on the research process itself; feminist cyborg literature; the legality of the World Bank’s scrutiny panel; pollinator conservation (Kat Harrold again); and the experiences of families with children who have difficulties communicating. Questions from the audience tended to be broad and non-specialist, and all the better for that: often it’s the straightforward, naive questions which test specialist knowledge.

The rest of Thursday Karin and I packed and then travelled up to Birmingham International for an early evening flight to Denmark. I’d been invited by my colleague Bo Dalsgaard to present a research seminar at the University of Copenhagen’s Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate. Coming from a small and very diverse department, it was great to visit such a large and specialised group of researchers, though over lunch the Center’s Director Carsten Rahbek told me that a common complaint from his staff was: “Why can’t we employ more people doing what I’m going?” Everything’s relative I suppose.

The title of my talk was “Pattern and process in pollination at large geographic scales”, which gave an overview of some of the research I’ve published over the last decade or so, framed around the following questions:

Globally, how many plant species are animal pollinated?
Are plant-pollinator interactions more ecologically specialized in the tropics?
How predictable are pollination syndromes in different parts of the world?
What are the historical and contemporary drivers of the relative importance of animal versus wind pollination? [No link here as that manuscript is currently in review!]

Quite a number of people in the Center were out doing field work or were otherwise engaged so I spoke to a modest-sized audience of some 30 people: certainly not the smallest audience I’ve ever presented to – that was three people, including the two who had invited me to give the talk!

The lecture seemed to be well received and there were some stimulating questions afterwards, though also a couple of challenging ones about statistical analysis. One of these I couldn’t answer until afterwards because I’d forgotten the details of the methods we’d used (note to self: re-read old papers before you present their findings). In answering the other I agreed with the questioner that the data could now be analysed in a more sophisticated way (future task, if I ever get the time). If Kat’s reading this, I hope she takes satisfaction in not being the only person to be asked difficult questions about their research this week!

Afterwards I chatted with Bo and Carsten about the limitations of the current and paleo-climate data sets we’ve been using in some studies, which are indeed very limited. But there are only two options. Do we work with data sets that are flawed, whilst acknowledging that any conclusions are tentative? Or wait until better data become available, which could be a decade in the future? My choice is definitely to go with the former, otherwise we’d never publish anything because there are always limitations to data used in studies of ecology and biodiversity. Personal and public honesty about such limitations, and ideas as to how they can be overcome in the future, are surely preferable to stalling research.

Later that afternoon I discussed science with two of Bo’s collaborators, Pietro Maruyama a Brazilian PhD student whom I’d met last November, and Peter, a Danish undergraduate. Both are doing excellent work on that most charismatic group of pollinators, the hummingbirds.

Friday evening I was exhausted, and Karin and I opted for dinner in the hotel restaurant and an early night, as Saturday was to be spent exploring Copenhagen. It’s a great city for wandering around, with fascinating architecture and unexpected additions to buildings, such as bronze dragons:

And parks with statues of artists and writers, such as Hans Christian Andersen:

P1110841

After a roundabout wander, via a gallery selling African tribal art (which we couldn’t afford) and a small lunch (which we could only just afford – Copenhagen’s an expensive city!) we eventually ended up at the University’s Botanical Garden, which has a superb living collection of cacti and succulents, orchids and other epiphytes, and alpine plants.

P1110846

It beautifully illustrates the huge morphological diversity encompassed within the 352,000 or so species of flowering plants, one of the many reasons why I love visiting botanical gardens: I always see something new. This included two species of bumblebees (Bombus) which I’m sure don’t occur in Britain. I’ll have to look them up when I get back: from Chester to Copenhagen and, tomorrow, back to Northampton.

Nature as gardener (Darwin’s Unrequited Isle part 5)

Fire and rain (Darwin’s Unrequited Isle part 4)

3 Replies

I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain,

I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end…

On Sunday I arrived back in Tenerife with my students for our annual field course. This is now my 14th trip to the island and James Taylor’s song Fire and Rain provides an apt soundtrack to some of what we’ve seen during our current stay on Darwin’s Unrequited Isle.

When we were here in 2013 the pine forest on the slopes south of Las Cañadas looked black and bare, having burned a few months previously:

Trunks of the endemic Canary Island Pine Tree (Pinus canariensis) were blackened and showed very little foliage:

That was April 2013. Twelve months later, following one of the wettest winters that Tenerife has experienced, we were greeted with a sight of rejuvenation. The pine trees are re-sprouting and the landscape is full of colour as plants such as Erysimum scoparium, Echium wildpretii and Argyranthemum tenerifae flower in abundance. There are also more butterflies that I can previously recall seeing in these habitats:

James Taylor’s song is about loss and grief; but from fire and rain also comes new life and new beginnings, a positive environmental stimulus for the endemic biodiversity of Tenerife. The fire has opened up the vegetation, allowing seeds to germinate, and the winter rain has stimulated growth and flowering in these summer-drought habitats.

….I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend,

But I always thought that I’d see you again.

Budget cuts to Kew are cultural vandalism

2 Replies

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, is a beautiful place to visit, a tourist destination for visitors to London, and a green island in an urban ocean. That’s the public face of the Gardens. What is less well appreciated to most of the casual strollers around the flower beds and glasshouses, is that Kew is arguably the most important centre for botanical research anywhere in the world. During its long history it has produced, and continues to deliver, top rate science that informs international conservation strategies, agriculture and horticulture, as well as basic plant science in ecology and evolutionary biology.

It’s also a welcoming, inclusive place that embraces scientific visitors from all over the world, as I know from personal experience. Although I’ve never had a formal relationship with staff at Kew, I’ve benefitted enormously from informal links, which have facilitated research and teaching, including annual trips to the Kew Herbarium for my final year undergraduate students.

I first visited Kew as a naive 20 year old to look at their living plant collection during research for what became my first ever publication: “Adaptations to arid environments in the Asclepiadaceae” (British Cactus and Succulent Journal 1986). So started a long appreciation of Kew and what it freely offers teachers and researchers, which has included access to specimens prior to overseas research trips, to assess distribution and flowering times; identification of specimens we’ve collected on those trips; and primary data for our study of fly pollination in the genus Ceropegia. I’ve also used their archives for my work on John Tweedie. Kew is an incredible resource that, in any civilised and culturally aware country, would be cherished and supported. Unfortunately it appears that I do not live in such a country.

Rumours have been circulating for a while about an impending, massive budget cut at Kew, on top of financial savings that have already been made. Now it appears that those proposed cuts are much bigger than anyone had thought and 120 posts, mainly in science, are threatened. I won’t repeat the depressing statistics underlying all of this – I’ll just urge you to visit the online campaign against these cuts, read the details, watch the David Attenborough video, sign the petition, and share it with friends and colleagues.

Please don’t let Kew wither away; it’s too important to UK science, conservation and education to allow it to be gutted without a fight.

What are YOU doing for our pollinators this year? (reduce, reuse, recycle part 6)

4 Replies

Earlier this year I was asked to write a short article by my former PhD student, and still a current collaborator, Dr Sam Tarrant. Sam works for the RSPB as the CEMEX UK-funded Biodiversity Advisor, and wanted something on pollinator conservation that could be circulated in the CEMEX company’s e-newsletter. In the spirit of reworking and reusing odd bits of writing, I thought I’d post it here too.

Insects are vital for our country’s economy. Don’t believe me? Then read on….

Beneath a large black mulberry tree near the University of Northampton’s Newton Building there is a plaque that commemorates its planting “On Shakespeare Commemoration Day, 3^rd May 1916”. Despite its age this tree annually produces large crops of succulent berries, aided by the fact that wind eddies are sufficient to disperse its pollen, ensuring pollination and fruit set. Each year it’s a scramble between students, lecturers and birds, to see who can eat the most.

In contrast, the old apple trees in the grounds possess a different strategy – pollination by insects that move from flower to flower each spring. This form of pollination is both more sophisticated and less reliable than wind pollination, and is currently under considerable threat: whilst there will never be a shortage of wind currents in Britain, insect pollinators are in decline.

The apples trees are not alone in requiring insects to pollinate them, so to do other farm and garden crops, including oil seed rape, field beans, courgettes, runner beans, and strawberries and other soft fruit. It’s worth at least £440 million annually to the British economy, and most of it is done by wild bees and hoverflies, rather than managed hives of honey bees.

But all is not well with these insects in Britain – they are in decline. Although the extent of the “pollination crisis” is debated by scientists, long term records show us that these insects are under pressure: 23 species of bee and flower-visiting wasp have gone extinct since the mid 1800s, as have 18 species of butterflies. Less obviously, other species have considerably reduced in abundance so that they are now found in only a small part of their previous distribution.

There are lots of gardeners who want to “do something” for the pollinators, and keeping honey bees is often mentioned. By all means, if you wish to help the honey bees (which are suffering their own problems) then keep a hive or two. That will not, however, help our wild, native pollinators; the analogy I use is that it’s the equivalent of trying to help our declining songbirds by opening a chicken farm!

If you want to make a real difference for pollinators in your own garden, here are a few ideas:

start by planting nectar and pollen rich flowers; there’s a useful list on the Royal Horticultural Society’s website (see below).
allow plants such as clover and dandelion to flower in your lawn, bees love them.
as well as food, pollinators also need nest and egg laying sites, so you could help by allowing some of the far corners of your plot to run a little wild.
wait until late Spring to cut back hollow stemmed perennials as they are used as hibernating places by some of our bees.
allow mason bees to nest in old walls and don’t worry about them, the wall won’t fall down.
And finally, stop using pesticides!

Changing some of our gardening habits can help a group of insects on which we rely and which supports our economy in a very real way.

Further reading and information:

Bees Wasps and Ants Recording Society: http://www.bwars.com/

Bumblebee Conservation Trust: http://www.bumblebeeconservation.org.uk/

Butterfly Conservation: http://www.butterfly-conservation.org/

Hoverfly Recording Scheme: http://www.hoverfly.org.uk/

Royal Horticultural Society’s list of plants for pollinators: http://www.rhs.org.uk/Gardening/Sustainable-gardening/Plants-for-pollinators