The importance of biodiversity, a handy concept that embraces diversity of eco-systems, species, genes and molecules, has been promoted for over three decades. Yet much life on Earth still faces unsustainable loss or extinction, perhaps because, as an otherwise upbeat Dave Goulson notes in A Buzz in the Meadow, ‘at a global level, conservation efforts so far have been a dismal failure’.
A bumblebee specialist with an extensive interest in the natural world, Goulson presents an inspirational case for awareness and appreciation of the teeming diversity of living things that exists even in our gardens or the local park. In this discursive account of the insects in a French meadow, he demonstrates how indispensable these small, often despised creatures are to human existence, and its survival.
His old farmhouse and 13 hectares of meadowland in the Charente, 65 km north-west of Limoges, is a haven for wild-flowers and insects, including 70 bee species, providing plentiful research material and experimental space.
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