Take the time to listen to this exceptional lecture I received from Graham White in Scotland. It is an hour long but worth every minute if you are trying to understand the role of neonicotinoids in bee losses and wider environmental damages. Many of you have thanked me for my efforts and have asked how they can help. This is one of the ways. This is part of the homework. They count on our ignorance. Deny them that.
Graham White’s background comments:
The second Annual Plymouth Linnean Lecture was held on Wednesday 18th March 2015 at Plymouth University by Professor Dave Goulson and was entitled “Bees, Pesticides and Politics: the impact of neonicotinoids on UK bumblebees “. This video acts as a permanent record of the Linnean Lecture Series and we welcome your comments and feedback. The lecture was presented jointly by Plymouth University and the Linnean Society of London. It was hosted by Dr Malcolm Scoble (Scientific Secretary to the Linnean Society of London) and this video includes his introduction and a Q&A with the audience.
At the time of filming, UK was within a two year moratorium on neonicotinoid use, a measure imposed by the European Union but strongly opposed by the UK government and the National Farmers Union. With a particular focus on bumblebees, Professor Goulson describes the scientific evidence that these pesticides may be impacting on the environment. He’ll also discuss wider issues surrounding ongoing biodiversity loss in farmland and the future of farming.
Professor Dave Goulson received his bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Oxford, followed by a PhD in butterfly ecology at Oxford Brookes University. He has held academic appointments at the University of Southampton and Stirling University and moved to the University of Sussex in 2013. He has published more than 200 scientific articles on the ecology and conservation of bumblebees and other insects.
He is the author of the popular science book and Sunday Times bestseller ‘A Sting in the Tale’ (2013), which has been translated into German, Dutch and Danish, which was followed by ‘A Buzz In the Meadow’ (2014). He also authored the scientific text ‘Bumblebees: Their Behaviour, Ecology & Conservation’ (2010) and founded the Bumblebee Conservation Trust (2006), a charity that has grown to 8,000 members. He was named the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) Social Innovator of the Year (2010) and given the Zoological Society of London’s Marsh Award for Conservation Biology in 2013. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2013.
