Lessons Learned from Developing a New Distance-Learning Masters Course in the Green Economy

It is widely recognised that for the green economy to develop successfully, new educational curricula will be required to help professionals develop appropriate knowledge and skills. Relatively few university courses have been developed to date that explicitly focus on the green economy, reflecting its recent origins. Here we present the lessons learned from developing and implementing a new Masters course in the green economy, at Bournemouth University in the UK. The most significant challenges were institutional barriers, such as different departmental policies and procedures and decentralised budget strategies, which inhibited the cross-departmental collaboration desired for interdisciplinarity. Uncertainty about the future development of the green economy and its value as a concept, among both teaching staff and prospective students, presented a further challenge. In addition, the development of an appropriate curriculum for green economy courses has received little attention previously. Here, we present an overview of the curriculum developed for this Masters-level course, and, based on our experience, we demonstrate how the challenges in developing such a course can successfully be overcome

Pollen metabarcoding reveals broad and species-specific resource use by urban bees

Bee populations are currently undergoing severe global declines driven by the interactive effects of a number of factors. Ongoing urbanisation has the potential to exacerbate bee declines, unless steps are taken to ensure appropriate floral resources are available. Sown wildflower strips are one way in which floral resources can be provided to urban bees. However, the use of these strips by pollinators in urban environments remains little studied. Here, we employ pollen metabarcoding of the rbcL gene to compare the foraging patterns of different bee species observed using urban sown wildflower strips in July 2016, with a goal of identifying which plant species are most important for bees. We also demonstrate the use of a non-destructive method of pollen collection. Bees were found to forage on a wide variety of plant genera and families, including a diverse range of plants from outside the wildflower plots, suggesting that foragers visiting sown wildflower strips also utilize other urban habitats. Particular plants within the wildflower strips dominated metabarcoding data, particularly Papaver rhoeas and Phacelia tanacetifolia. Overall, we demonstrate that pollinators observed in sown wildflower strips use certain sown foodplants as part of a larger urban matrix

Really wild? Naturalistic grazing in modern landscapes

From neat fields and hedgerows to windswept moors and mountains, the present landscape of the crowded islands of Britain has been shaped by people. Although 18th-century landscape architects unashamedly created scenery to please the eye, our domination of plant and animal life, and of nutrient, water and energy flows, has generally been a product of economic necessity. Even features once considered natural, such as the Norfolk Broads, can have artificial origins. As urbanisation, agriculture and forestry intensified during the 20th century there was little room left for the diversity of species and ecosystems characteristic of earlier times. Growing concern for our diminishing wildlife led to the development of the nature conservation movement, with the aim of safeguarding our flora and fauna (Sheail 1998). This in turn engendered the practice of targeted conservation management, combining low-intensity and traditional techniques with the growing science of ecology. This mainstream approach has often been accompanied by a counter-current, recently voiced in British Wildlife, that ‘Nature is becoming subservient to Nature Conservation’ (Oates 2006), that something intangible or spiritual is lost through too much management. Alternatives where intervention is reduced, or even withdrawn, have periodically entered conservation literature and discourse. Sixteen years ago, the ‘Edwards Report’ suggested that a ‘number of experimental schemes on a limited scale should be set up in the [upland] National Parks, where farming is withdrawn entirely and the natural succession of vegetation is allowed to take its course’. Today, this would be called ‘Re-wilding’. Re-wilding has received increasing support in the UK and interest extends beyond advocacy groups, as evidenced by a consortium of 38 ecologists and policy-makers who recently placed re-wilding and its consequences in the top 100 ecological questions of high policy relevance for the UK (Sutherland et al. 2006). It has even been advocated as the ‘optimal conservation strategy for the maintenance and restoration of biodiversity in Europe’. Specifically, this includes the restoration of grazing and browsing by wild large herbivores i.e. ‘naturalistic grazing’ (Vera 2000). It was in this climate that English Nature commissioned us to investigate the ecological, cultural and welfare implications of naturalistic grazing and re-wilding in modern English landscapes

Increased vigilance of paired males in sexually dimorphic species: distinguishing between alternative explanations in wintering Eurasian wigeon

In animal pairs, males are often more vigilant than females. This is generally assumed to result from mate guarding (either against predators or other males). However, when males have conspicuous secondary sexual characteristics, they could be constrained to be more vigilant because of a higher predation risk than females. We attempted to distinguish between the "male constraint hypothesis" and two variations of the mate-guarding hypothesis by studying the vigilance behavior of the sexually dimorphic wigeon during early winter, when some males are in breeding plumage and some are not and when not all males are paired. The proportion of time spent vigilant by paired males in breeding plumage was five times higher than any other category of males or females. We found no significant differences between the vigilance levels of unpaired male wigeon in cryptic and in breeding plumage and therefore rejected the male constraint hypothesis. As vigilance levels of paired and unpaired females did not differ either, we rejected the hypothesis that paired males invest in vigilance to reduce their mate's need to be vigilant to predation risks. Paired females interacted less frequently with other wigeon than unpaired ones, and it is probably to protect their female from other males that paired male wigeon increase their vigilance times. Copyright 2003.

Rapid sustainability modeling for raptors by radio-tagging and DNA-fingerprinting

Sustainable use of wildlife is crucial to ensuring persistence of natural resources. We used age-specific survival and breeding data to parameterize a demographic model for a harvested Kazakh saker falcon (Falco cherrug) population by radiotagging juveniles and estimating adult turnover with DNA-fingerprinting during 1993–1997. We gathered similar data during 1990–1998 to model populations of British buzzards (Buteo buteo), and during 1980–1998 to model populations of Swedish goshawks (Accipiter gentilis). Leg-bands and implanted microtransponders provided ways to test for bias and to estimate the harvest of sakers for falconry. Despite an estimated minimum first-year survival of only 23%, the observed productivity of 3.14 young per clutch would sustain a saker population (i.e., λ = 1) with a breeding rate (at laying) of only 0.63 for adults or with a residual juvenile yield of 37% if all adults breed. Higher first-year survival rates for goshawks and buzzards correlated with juvenile yields of up to 71%, but no more than half as many individuals if adults also were harvested. An annual population decline of 40% for sakers in southern Kazakhstan could be explained by observed productivity of only 0.71 young per clutch if there was also an estimated harvest of 55% of adults. This study shows that demographic models such as these can now be built rapidly if nestlings are fitted with reliable and safe radiotags and adult turnover is estimated from genetic analyses or other techniques