Beleid en debat

We are delighted to welcome you to Charles Darwin House for the “The Impact of Pesticides on Bee Health” – the third joint meeting between the three societies. The Biochemical Society, the British Ecological Society and the Society for Experimental Biology have a long history of organizing and supporting meetings on all aspects of biochemistry, cell biology and ecology. We believe this joint meeting between the societies (to be held at the joint headquarters of the three societies) will succeed in bringing together experts from around the world, who are solving biological problems using multiple integrated approaches. The final video discussion session can be viewed on Youtube at a http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pbCGDWed68.

Researchers looked at data going back thirty years and found that this effect has remained stable over time and shows no signs of decreasing. ‘Our study has shown that organic farming, as an alternative to conventional farming, can yield significant long-term benefits for biodiversity,’ said Sean Tuck of Oxford University’s Department of Plant Sciences, lead author of the study. ‘Organic methods could go some way towards halting the continued loss of diversity in industrialised nations.’ For pollinators such as bees, the number of different species was 50% higher on organic farms, although it is important to note that the study only looked at ‘species richness’. ‘Species richness tells us how many different species there are but does not say anything about the total number of organisms,’ said Mr Tuck. ‘There are many ways to study biodiversity and species richness is easy to measure, providing a useful starting point. Broadly speaking, high species richness usually indicates a variety of species with different functions. Taking the example of bees, species richness would tell us how many different species of bee were on each farm but not the total number of bees.’

Many people have read about the decline of the honeybee in the news in recent years. Experts agree that a combination of changes in habitat, exposure to pesticides, mites, disease, and other factors have harmed them. But less attention is paid to wild bees and other pollinators, which are also extremely important.

Honeybees are not native to North America. Records indicate they were brought over by English settlers in the 1600s for honey and wax. But there have always been native bees and other pollinators who did the work of pollination before honeybees arrived and still do much of that work today. Pennsylvania has 300 different species of wild bees, alone. The honeybee is useful to us. They alone provide delicious honey and we need them for pollinating some of the cultivated landscapes we require to feed ourselves. Honeybees are considered to be the most valuable pollinators in agriculture, because they are well understood, relatively easy to maintain, movable, and able to communicate rapidly the locations of new food sources. Some crops are almost entirely dependent on the honeybee for production. Blueberries and cherries are 90-percent dependent and almonds almost entirely.

The increasing loss of habitat due to deforestation, use of chemical fertilizers and human encroachment has caused the decline in the number of country’s bird population over the years. According to the 2011 report of the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (NPWC) and Bird Conservation Nepal (BCN), 149 species of birds have been listed in the threatened list. “There has been no let up in human activities and the bird habitat is dwindling. Not much effort is being put for conservation. It is only inevitable if the list of threatened bird species have become longer by now,” said Hemraj Baral, an ornithologist. The Zoological Society of London, National Trust for Nature Conservation and Himalayan Nature are jointly conducting a survey to find out the number of bird species in the country. The preliminary study suggests as many as 170 species could fall in the threatened list.

A decade of bird-watching confirms a naturalist's worst fears-birds are leaving the city of Mumbai. While teams of bird-watchers spotted 277 species during the first edition of the annual Mumbai Bird Race in 2005 and 283 the following year, the numbers have fallen to 249 in 2013. The tenth edition of the bird race will be held in and around the city on Sunday. Data gleaned during the event over the last decade shows a 20% decline in the average number of species spotted at Karnala Bird Sanctuary, on the outskirts of the city. A combination of data collected from the bird race as well as from three separate bird surveys since the 1980s show a 35% dip in the frequency of bird sightings at the Sanjay Gandhi National Park since the 1980s.